Traffic movement on the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg is set to ease out once the underground ITO Metro station is operationalised as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is considering increasing the width of the road by nearly 10 feet. The Delhi Traffic Police has written to the DMRC requesting it to design a plan on the same.
“We received a letter from the Traffic Police today (Thursday) in which they have requested us to widen the road once the project is done. We had already planned something on similar lines. The road leading to Tilak Bridge, BSZ Marg, will see a sizeable increase in its width - most likely up to 10 feet,” said DK Saini, Director (Projects), DMRC.
Currently the stretch is a three-lane road which often gets congested during peak-hours.
For long, the busy ITO intersection has been witness to long traffic jams and the construction underway for the metro station here has only aggravated the problem. Under the existing traffic plan, only a narrow strip on the main carriageway of BSZ Marg is open to vehicles before the traffic signal. Implemented in April, the diversions were to be in place for two months.
However, even now the plan has not been restored to the original plan. According to traffic police, nearly one lakh vehicles cross ITO everyday, while around four or five lakh people use the intersection. The ITO crossing is used to access Old Delhi, east Delhi, outer Ring Road as well as south Delhi.