After several rounds of interaction and field inspections, the New Delhi Municipal Council, the Delhi Traffic Police and the New Delhi Traders’ Association have finally worked out a mutually agreeable plan to ensure a comparatively less hassle-free approach to Connaught Place’s ambitious re-development project.
According to Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Ajay Chaddha, a decision has been taken to put up barricades around construction of two subways opposite Panchkuian Road in H and G Blocks and two subways opposite Barakhambha Road in N and M Blocks and allow construction work on these four subways to continue. A decision on the remaining four subways where digging has not yet begun would be taken at a later stage and no construction would be allowed there till then.
In addition, it has been decided to put on hold any further work of road concretisation in Outer Circle and continue to allow vehicle exit on Minto Road and Barakhambha Road while turning the exit created at Haldiram’s to an entry point for vehicles now.
“The decision was taken after experimenting the traffic flow with these traffic arrangements. We have decided to keep two lanes free on Barakhamba Road for exit of vehicles as this road had been completely closed to traffic before as was contributing to traffic bottlenecks. So now vehicles coming to Inner Circle can exit either through Barakhamba Road or Baba Kharak Singh Marg.”
“As for Middle Circle, we have allowed digging work to continue on the Panchkuian Road section and once the Panchkuian Road radial is ready to handle normal traffic after completion of work we would take a decision on which radial road would be taken up for work next.”
According to Mr. Chadhha, while these new traffic arrangements were put in place on Wednesday, proper signboards informing commuters of the same were installed on Thursday for their effective implementation.
The over Rs.600-crore CP redevelopment project had recently become a cause of concern with commuters and traders complaining of major traffic jams and dwindling profits.
While façade restoration work was already on at 16 blocks in Inner Circle, digging work for creation of a services duct in Middle Circle and barricading work for construction of subways in Outer Circle from December 25 had led to acomplete collapse of the traffic management in the business district of CP from December 25.
This had warranted intervention of Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna who had directed the three bodies to sit down and work out a solution to the problem.
