long hours stuck in vehicles on the Delhi-Jaipur highway also known as the Pink City Expressway are a thing of the past. The Delhi-Jaipur highway has cut journey time by half with broader lanes allowing for a modern carriageway for vehicular traffic, and congratulations are due to all involved.
“The Delhi-Jaipur Highway provides a pleasant journey and is well constructed. It’s never been this smooth and I’m eminently qualified to speak on this because I have spent the past 10 years in continuous travel by road between the two cities,” Atul Singh, a frequent traveller to Jaipur from Delhi, told The Pioneer.
Gyan Shankar Kumar, an IBM employee, said the most amazing part of the journey is there is no traffic bottleneck or congestion on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. The Pioneer team’s trip to Jaipur and back
confirmed that it is a pretty smooth ride.
There are some concerns which remain to be addressed as near Patava, some 50-60 kilometres before Jaipur, where encroachment is beginning. And traffic is heavy near Bilaspur though it thankfully keeps moving. Nearly all commuters, we spoke to, said one of the major bottlenecks used to be due to the old toll booths where long queues resulted in huge traffic jams. That too has improved.
“Truck drivers need to be reined in with more CCTV cameras and police patrols checking on their speed especially near the old toll stretch and a recently constructed U-turn is causing some trouble. These are relatively minor issues but the authorities should prevent a trouble spot from emerging,” said another regular commuter.
“The Delhi-Jaipur highway is a really smooth ride. There are no traffic and congestion problems here. I have witnessed huge traffic jams, endless honking and road rage in the past; today, the situation is wonderful in this respect. The wide roads have made a real difference,” said Jai Krishan, a restaurant owner off the highway.
It is important to mention that it took just three hours for this reporter to reach Jaipur from Delhi.
In fact, the highway has ensured emergency services including police, fire brigade and medical help are timely for not only incidents on the highway but in all adjoining areas, reinforcing the point that better road connectivity is a development good at many levels. But the return journey was marred by a few traffic snarls at toll plazas mainly due to long-haul trucks blocking a couple of lanes so it took close to five hours. Nonetheless, the Delhi-Jaipur Highway, which passes through 57 flyovers and 423 villages of seven districts in Haryana and Rajasthan is a project to be emulated.
In order to further decongest National Highway 48, the NHAI is in the final stages of preparing a detailed project report for a 1.2-kilometre elevated flyover in Manesar at a cost of Rs 100 crore to be completed in 15 months.
