Nitin Gadkari inaugurated a three-lane underpass at Parade Road junction near Manekshaw Centre on NH 8

To decongest traffic to IGI Airport, Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari Friday inaugurated a three-lane underpass at Parade Road junction near Manekshaw Centre on NH 8 in New Delhi.

National Highway No. 8 (New NH-48) is the prime link providing connectivity to IGI Airport from Delhi and NCR. With opening of this underpass, movement of traffic from airport to Dhaula Kuan would become signal free.

The underpass was completed in a record time of 112 days, and is part of NHAI's project for development of a signal free corridor from Dhaula Kuan interchange to IGI Airport, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.

"The frequent traffic jams in the corridor result in travel time of 10-30 minutes in crossing the 3 kms stretch between Dhaula Kuan interchange and the Airport. To tackle this problem, NHAI has taken up the development of a signal free corridor from Dhaula Kuan interchange to Airport at an estimated cost of Rs 270 crore," it added.

The project includes widening of Dhaula Kuan - IGI corridor from six-lane to eight-lane, a three-lane flyover from Janakpuri road to merge with NH-8, the three-lane vehicular underpass at Parade Road junction that was inaugurated Friday, two vehicular under-passes and a foot over bridge for pedestrians.

"The work on the project commenced in March, 2018, and is now 75 per cent complete," the statement said.

It said the project has huge challenges in terms of traffic management of about 3 lakh PCUs (passenger car units) per day, presence of a large number of civil and defence utilities, shifting of defence infrastructure and getting security clearances.

The work plan for the project was prioritised with the objective of providing early relief to the commuters, it said, adding as a first step towards development of the signal-free corridor, a flyover at Dhaula Kuan junction near Dhaula Kuan Metro Station was completed in record time of 136 working days and opened to traffic on March 2 this year.

The statement said this project would be in addition to the nine other projects being implemented for decongesting Delhi-NCR.

These include the 22 km, six-lane elevated corridor on Gurugram-Sohna Road costing Rs 2,000 crore on which work has started; eight-lane Delhi-Panipat highway from Mukarba Chowk to Panipat on NH-1 being constructed at a cost of Rs 2,300 crore; the 29 km, eight-lane access controlled Dwarka Expressway costing about Rs 9,500 crore on which work has started; package II, III and IV of Delhi-Meerut Expressway costing Rs 5,900 crore and four-laning of 124 km Khekra - EPE junction to Shamli-Saharanpur (NH-709 B) at a cost of about Rs 1200 crore.