Drive from Delhi to hills may get easier from next week

NEW DELHI: Driving down to the hills in Uttarakhand and to Lucknow, Kanpur, Bareilly and Ramnagar in Uttar Pradesh is set to get a bit smoother from next week. NHAI is scheduled to open the 5.5 km long flyover at Pilkhuwa on June 21-22, which will help bypass the congested town on NH-9 (earlier known as NH-24).

The opening of this flyover will help commuters save around 30 minutes.NHAI officials said another bridge on Ganga canal, a flyover near Masuri and an underpass at Dasna would be completed by July end. “Vehicles can cross this 22 km stretch between Dasna and Hapur in less than 15 minutes,” said an official.
However, commuters will have to wait at least till January-February for a seamless drive from Nizamuddin Bridge to Hapur. NHAI officials said so far only 52% of the widening work has been completed between Delhi border and the Dasna stretch of this corridor. The daily traffic flow on this stretch is about 80,000 vehicles. “It’s a huge challenge to widen the road, build bridges and flyovers when the traffic flow is so huge. Still we are confident of completing the stretch much before the March 2020 deadline,” said another official.
Executives of Chetak Infratech, which got the contract to build this stretch, said they used three gantry-based girder launching machine to complete the flyover quickly. The elevated stretch has been built on a single pier.
Locals at Pilkhuwa said construction of the elevated road was the only solution to beat traffic jams on this stretch, which witnesses traffic flow of about 40,000 vehicles in a day. “It used to take at least half an hour to cover the stretch passing through the city. It got worse when the girders were launched and fixed in the flyover. Only one lane was available for traffic coming from three lanes. People have gone through the worst, but now there will be huge relief,” said Akhar, a fruit seller.
However, he added that the opening of the flyovers would have an adverse impact on their business since most of the vehicles would prefer taking the flyover. Other locals told TOI that there will be real relief when the structures at Masuri get completed. “People have suffered a lot because of dust and congestion. Opening of all the flyovers will ease life,” said Rohit Khajuria, a resident from Masuri.
While the Delhi border to Dasna stretch is being developed as a 14-lane highway with six lanes of expressway, the Dasna-Hapur stretch will have 10 lanes including the six-lane dedicated expressway. “The existing toll plaza at Dasna will be shifted to Pilkhuwa,” officials said.
On Wednesday, when the TOI team travelled along the entire stretch from Delhi to Hapur, it witnessed long traffic snarls near Khoda, Sector-62 crossing and at Dasna. Traffic marshals seemed helpless as commuters were violating traffic norms at will.
“The traffic is unruly. No one wants to wait for a minute and you will find people going out of designated lanes and causing jams. By the time you fix the problem at one spot, there is a similar problem at another spot. Too many diversions have added to the crisis,” said a traffic cop posted at the Dasna crossing.