No plan has been finalised yet to deal with the traffic situation at ITO crossing here in Delhi, but Delhi Traffic Police is considering all options to ensure smooth flow of traffic, a senior official said on Friday. Denying reports that the earlier arrangement that was in place before the construction of the ITO Metro station will be restored immediately, Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Muktesh Chander said that while that is an option, other alternatives are also being considered.
“The current arrangement of traffic flow was made due to the construction of the Metro station at ITO. But now that the construction has been completed, traffic arrangements cannot be left like that. So they either need to be restored to the earlier status or a new plan has to be worked out. We will soon decide what exactly needs to be done here,” he said.
For the time being, the currently-operational plan of diverting Delhi Gate-bound traffic through Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg-Vishnu Digambar Marg-Kotla Marg-Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg will continue till a new plan is worked out. While one of the plans being considered is resuming the earlier status of allowing traffic coming from Tilak Marg and Mathura Road to go straight to Delhi Gate via Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Traffic Police is also looking at other alternatives which could help improve the traffic situation further, and allow the commuters to have a smooth passage through the usually-congested ITO crossing.
Earlier, in order to decongest the ITO crossing, Delhi Traffic Police had conducted trial runs of diverting East Delhi-bound traffic by forcing the vehicles to take a compulsory left turn into Deen Dayal Marg and take a loop through Vishnu Digambar Marg-Kotla Marg-Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. While the trial was supposed to reduce the waiting time at ITO signal from 20 minutes to seven minutes, the trial didn’t bring the desired results. Instead of making things better, it led to the choking of all the roads, plus the confusion among drivers approaching from Tilak Marg about which road to take, leading to conflicts.
The trial runs for the new plan were supposed to take place this week but couldn’t be carried out due to non-availability of bollards. An official said that right now, there’s no timeline decided to conduct the trials. In light of the earlier fiasco on this small stretch, it only makes sense that Traffic Police is taking its own sweet time.