A high-powered committee set up by the Union Urban Development Ministry on decongesting traffic in Delhi has recommended that construction of signal-free corridors, flyovers, underpasses or foot overbridges should not be taken up unless these are over a river, a natural barricade or a railway track. The committee, in its 126-page report, has said these constructions should only be done if there is no alternative solution possible to ease traffic in the national Capital.
Over 88.50 lakh vehicles are registered in Delhi and approximately two lakh outbound vehicles pass through the city every day. Delhi might have the most extensive road network at 21 per cent of its geographical area but it is saturated and choked with vehicles.
Officials of the Delhi Government said most of the flyovers constructed in Delhi proved to be ill conceived due to faulty planning.
“The flyover is not the solution of traffic jams in Delhi. It just shifts problem from one point to other. Of 170 traffic locations surveyed by the RITES, about 70 locations were found to be carrying more vehicles than their design capacity.
“The traffic police have identified 44 traffic bottleneck in the city that include Sarai Kale Khan, Kashmere Gate Chowk (Morigate), Nigam Bodh Ghat, Mukundpur Chowk, Dr Bhahbha Marg crossing, Shastri Park crossing, Punjabi Bagh Chowk, ISBT Kashmere Gate, Mahipalpur Flyover, Shani Mandir and Shahdara Flyover,” said Delhi Government officials.
Pointing out increasing traffic volumes, officials said Ring Road’s total length is 48 km and is a six-lane carriageway and it was designed to carry about 75,000 vehicles a day. “But the road carries 1.6 lakh vehicles per day and is expected to carry about five lakh vehicles by 2016-17,” said officials.
The report pointed out that Delhi was developed as a seamless city with an urban continuum comprising of a number of rapidly growing towns in Haryana and UP. This has added to the flow and movement of traffic within Delhi. Despite measures by way of increasing the length of the road network and road surface space through widening, construction of a number of flyovers/grade separators and, launching of the Metro, the traffic congestion has continued to increase unabated.
According to the report, street (road) density should be increased per square kilometre rather than increasing street area of a single street. It said street widening should be avoided and smaller grid of streets should be carved out of existing easements as this would enable people to take short-cuts for short trips without congesting city-level arterial roads.
The report said geometry of all junctions should be retrofitted for safety of pedestrians and cyclists. It said signaled crosswalks should be located every 80-250 km with medium cuts, properly aligned zebra crossings, sidewalks with signals wherever required. “All junctions should be retrofitted with number plate recognition and other IT related hardware to enable efficient traffic enforcement,” it said.
Delhi Metro is currently about 211-km-long with another 300 km under various stages of construction (Phase III) and planning (Phase IV) carries about 26 lakh passengers per day. Buses in Delhi carry about 52 lakh passengers per day. In spite of this, Delhi faces huge congestion issues.
According to the report, roads already occupy approximately about 21 per cent of the total area of the city, which clearly limits the potential for increase in road space. In a sustainable future scenario, the share of public transport and Non Motorised Transport (NMT) is 80 per cent.