17 hours Ago
The Delhi Public Works Department (PWD) has signed off on the plan to double the one-way Savitri Cinema flyover along Outer Ring Road in south Delhi and work on the long-delayed project to add a carriageway towards Nehru Place is likely to begin soon, officials aware of the matter said on Thursday. Once complete, the expanded flyover is likely to ease traffic around Chittaranjan Park, Greater Kailash and Nehru Place. However, the construction work, which is expected to last at least a year, will severely hobble traffic along the arterial road that links south, south-west and south-east Delhi and falls on one of the most popular routes to the airport.
The plan to widen the flyover was proposed nearly a decade ago, but has been tangled in procedural hurdles since then, Delhi PWD minister Parvesh Verma told HT. “We are taking several steps for decongesting the Outer Ring Road where people are permanently hassled by traffic concerns..
. Our government has cleared the budget and I have asked officials to start work at the earliest,” he said. The 1.
5km single-lane, one-way flyover sandwiched between the Chirag Delhi and Kalkaji flyovers will be converted to a two-lane one, as part of the PWD plan. It carries traffic from Nehru Place towards Chirag Delhi and IIT Delhi. Work has been held back by issues around land acquisition, tree-felling and funding, even as the project was first proposed in 2015 and approved by the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning & Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC) the next year.
The expansion work will fit into PWD’s larger aim of a signal-free stretch from Sarai Kale Khan to Malviya Nagar. The Delhi government has earmarked ₹ 3,843 crore to improve roads and flyovers in the state budget presented last month, more than double the allocation made last year, Verma pointed out. Currently, traffic towards Nehru Place from the Chirag Delhi flyover splits in three: Towards Nehru Place, a U-turn and a right turn towards Chittaranjan Park and Greater Kailash - 2.
The current flyover was built in 2001, but burgeoning traffic pressures soon left commuters, especially those heading towards Nehru Place, stuck in snaking snarls. “The flyover was initially delayed due to pending approvals. In the last two years, financial approval was not given and the delays have also escalated the initial cost projection.
However, all clearances have been given now,” said a PWD official. Residents can, however, expect that construction work will lead to traffic diversions and jams along the stretch for about a year. “We are all for development work that can provide residents with some relief, but PWD has a poor track record with meeting timelines.
Once work is started on any stretch, the residents suffer in the absence of any plans to mitigate dust and to divert or manage traffic,” said Chetan Sharma, chairman of Federation of GK-II complex RWAs. The agency has missed timelines on a string of crucial projects over the past few years, with the delays throwing a spanner in traffic on major roads. Often, missed deadlines have also reduced the project’s benefits, with traffic volumes and patterns evolving in that time, Previously, the agency completed the doubling of the Sarai Kale Khan flyover on Outer Ring Road where a one-way flyover existed previously.
The new flyover was inaugurated in October 2023, after multiple delays dogged the Ashram and Kale Khan upgradation projects. Both flyovers were delayed by around two years from the initial planned timeline. In March 2023, the agency carried out repair work on the Chirag Delhi flyover, around 200m away from the Savitri flyover.
In the first phase, the Nehru Place-IIT Delhi carriageway was shut, while in the second phase, the flyover was closed for commuters travelling in the opposite direction, triggering jams. The Chirag Delhi flyover repair work took a little less than two months, but this period was marred by traffic snarls through the day, with vehicles being stuck at the one-kilometre stretch for hours. HT has also reported how commuters on the west Delhi side of the Outer Ring Road continue to face snarls where an elevated corridor has been developed between the Punjabi Bagh and Moti Nagar flyovers.
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