gurgaon

Updated: Dec 21, 2017 23:04 IST

In 2016, Gurgaon was hit by massive traffic jams after the city experienced extensive waterlogging between July and August. The events and the extreme hardship that commuters were faced with at the time prompted officials to go into a huddle and propose measures to decongest key junctions in the city and free up the movement of traffic.

City planners proposed a number of elevated roads and underpasses to reduce the volume of traffic on key junctions and boost traffic management in the city. However, the projects, which were to give a massive boost to the city in terms of infrastructure, got stuck in limbo.

It wasn’t until 2017 that these projects got a fresh lease of life. While some of the underpasses and flyovers have already been made operational, the rest will open to the commuting public by the end of this year. The projects will come as the perfect year-end gift for the city of 30 lakh.

As many as four flyovers and five underpasses are in different stages of implementation over an 18-km stretch on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and will see the light of day by January 1, 2018. Construction of all these infrastructure projects commenced in September last year.

A flyover and an underpass at Hero Honda Chowk, two underpasses at Rajiv Chowk, one underpass at Signature Tower and one underpass and three flyovers (two elevated U-turns and one straight elevated road) at Iffco Chowk are being given finishing touches currently and will be thrown open to the public by the end of December or the first week of January.

Besides these projects, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) also opened a flyover on Maharana Pratap Chowk to ease the flow of traffic on Mehrauli Road. The flyover was built at a cost of over ₹1,500 crore and involved rigorous construction work over a period of 15 months. Though these projects proved a hassle for commuters during implementation and also drove up the city’s pollution levels, residents hope that the fruit of labour, at long last, will be sweet.

“The NHAI delivered these projects well in time, despite facing difficulties in land transfer and shifting of underground utilities. All the hard work that we put in are set to bear fruit, as these projects will soon become key landmarks in the city,” Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI, Gurgaon, said.

A railway over bridge at Basai, constructed by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), has opened to traffic to enable smooth flow of vehicles on the Dwarka Expressway and in sectors 81-115.

However, work on several other infrastructure projects such as the underground U-turn on the national highway near Ambience Mall, Connecting Peripheral Road (CPR) and the cloverleaf on the national highway near Kherki Daula, could not begin for one reason or the other this year.

The CPR and cloverleaf projects got stuck in litigation over land, the underground U-turn project near Ambience Mall was held up due to differences between the DLF, the implementing authority, and the Ambience Group over the project’s design. The project is tipped to enable pedestrians and commuters to cross the expressway from Udtog Vihar towards Ambience Mall.

However, in a recent boost to the project, both stakeholders — the Ambience Group and the DLF — agreed to share the construction cost after two rounds of meeting with V Umashankar, commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG).

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“Our aim is to enable pedestrians and commuters to cross the expressway safely. I am hopeful that the (underground) U-turn (near Ambience Mall) will also see the light of day soon,” Umashankar said.

Commuters had been facing hassles crossing the expressway since 2008 and the troubles grew manifold due to an increase in the city’s population and the rise in the number of vehicles plying on the stretch.

“The NHAI has brought some much-needed relief to us. These projects had only been on paper over the last five years,” Rambir Singh, a resident of Narsinghpur, said.

However, the condition of several arterial and sector roads leaves a lot to be desired, as they have seen no repairs since 2016.

Although the MCG released ₹200 crore fund for road repair, only a few of these stretches have been re-carpeted. The others only saw patchwork.