NEW DELHI: If you are taking a
flight
out of Delhi on a Sunday and have to take the Mahipalpur underpass to reach Indira Gandhi International
Airport
, change your plan.
The state-of-the-art underpass — opened two months ago to provide direct access to
Aerocity
from Vasant Kunj, thus bypassing the regular traffic jams near Mahipalpur village — is an altogether different story on Sundays.
Mahipalpur village lies on the left side of the road when coming from Vasant Kunj and on Sundays there is a weekly market there adjacent to the Central Industrial Security Force camp. This takes up the lion’s share of the road for the entire evening and until late in the night, impeding the usual smooth flow of traffic towards Aerocity.
Stalls put up to sell items of all sorts and carts from which fruits and snacks are sold take up almost the entire road leading to the underpass. “The hawkers and vendors leave only a single lane for vehicles to use,” said a CISF personnel deployed at the camp. “The market comes to life around 5pm though the vendors begin setting up their shops earlier than that. The period between 6pm and 8.30pm sees the maximum chaos because the volume of vehicles is highest at that time.”
He said that it becomes better after that, but easy passage is hampered till around 11pm, which is when the sellers start wrapping up business. “Lots of people get stuck in the traffic, including, of course, air travellers,” the CISF man added.
Admitting that there are traffic snarls due to the market, Hemlata, a Mahipalpur village resident, added, “However, the Sunday bazaar has been located at this spot for a very long time and so remains there despite the new underpass.”
Though the
Central Public Works Department claims to have built the underpass in record time, the weekly market, it appears, was not factored in. Also, no action has been taken by the civic agencies to relocate the market to ensure it doesn’t obstruct the airport-bound traffic on Sundays.
Due to this lack of foresight, the weekly market renders the nearly Rs 200-crore project worthless because it still suffers traffic jams similar to those it was created to avoid.
A similar infrastructure project in
south Delhi that is unable to meet its full potential is the Rs 260-crore Sarita Vihar underpass. Constructed jointly by Delhi Development Authority and Indian Railways, the more than a kilometre-long underpass reduces the distance between Noida and Okhla from nine kilometres to just one and slashes the travel time from Noida past Sarita Vihar to Okhla and its neighbourhood from 45 minutes to 10.
And yet, the project has not been able to solve the traffic problems of the area for lack of proper planning. As one travels from Noida to Okhla and then further south towards Kalkaji and
Govindpuri
, the road keeps getting narrower. While the stretch from
Okhla Estate Marg
till the Ma Anandmayee Marg intersection is fairly wide and provides a smooth ride, the road starts tapering from that point towards Alaknanda and Govindpuri.
The worst portion is the road between Kalkaji Extension and Tughlaqabad Extension, where e-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, carts, autorickshaws, cycles and cows vie with cars and two wheelers for space. It is at intersections where the small lanes emerging from Kalkaji Extension and Tughlaqabad Extension merge with the Okhla Estate Marg that there’s the worst of chaos and interminable snarls.