By IANS
New Delhi : India’s most talked and written about expressway connecting the capital to the booming suburban town of Gurgaon was inaugurated here Wednesday, promising a fast-track ride for thousands of commuters and international air passengers.
“It is a huge boost to Delhi’s road connectivity. Now, you have a multi-lane flyover to Gurgaon to ease traffic snarls. Let the traffic flow and we will remove the minor bottlenecks, if all they exist, on the stretch,” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit told IANS.
She was present at the inauguration by Transport and Shipping Minister T.R. Baalu. The formal inauguration happened after impatient commuters ‘inaugurated’ the crucial road link a week ago by removing the barriers, fed up as they were with delays in its opening.
“There will be as many flyovers required for a better-connected and improved Delhi. Residents should have no room for complaints. But the irony is we are better with them and better without them,” the chief minister said alluding to the resentment, doubts and allegations that marked the mega infrastructure project, a showpiece of the capital.
Dikshit was, however, cryptic about the delay in the completion of the project. “There was mischief,” she smiled enigmatically, when asked why did it fall behind schedule by almost three years. The project was initially scheduled for completion in 2005.
The 27.7-km long Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway is part of the ambitious Golden Quadrilateral Project to connect the country’s north-south-east-west corridors, first conceived by the government of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The project comprises nine flyovers, four pedestrian subways and two foot bridges.
The expressway, a toll road with three collection centres, is located in one of the highest vehicle density zone – the Delhi-Gurgaon commercial hub. The artery will connect the 14.3-km stretch from the heart of the capital to Gurgaon, a business and shopping hub, in 25 minutes instead of the 45 minutes to two hours earlier. The 32-lane toll was also inaugurated Wednesday.
Baalu, who formally opened the Rao Tula Ram Marg-Palam flyover, said there will be at least six more foot bridges – over and above the existing two – to facilitate movement of pedestrians.
There are four underpasses, and two overbridges, one at Palam junction and the other at Subroto Park.
The expressway, said National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officers, is a boon for air travellers. It will reduce travel time to and from the Indira Gandhi International Airport and make the ride more comfortable for thousands of passengers, who are otherwise subjected to traffic snarls, delays and poor access through a dusty and poorly lit arterial road.
Explaining the advantage to air-travellers, a senior NHAI officer said passengers driving from the capital to the airport will have to take a downramp (road on which traffic flows downward) through the access-controlled expressway and those entering the capital from the airport will have to take a upramp to reach the expressway.
“The upside is that those coming from the airport will not have to play toll tax at the toll gate and there will be no red lights to stop traffic. Only those going to the airport will have to pay toll tax,” he said.
The safety measures are also in place. “There are 24 emergency booths and three ambulances to take care of commuters in distress. Road marshals to guide commuters along the stretch,” said R.P. Indoria, the chief project director.
In India, national highways are the mainstays of surface communication. They cover nearly 67,000 km of which only 200 km are expressways. Indian highways constitute only two percent of the total road network in the country, but ferry nearly 40 percent of the total traffic.