New flyover connecting Dhaula Kuan to IGI airport will reduce travel time
New Delhi: In a major relief for commuters travelling from Dhaula Kuan to IGI airport, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will open a new four-lane flyover connecting both the points. The 3-km long stretch of NH8 from Dhaula Kuan interchange to the airport usually takes 10-30 minutes to traverse. This new flyover is expected to cut that travel time by 30 minutes during the peak hours. The move has been initiated by the highways authority to create a signal-free corridor for the commuters going to and from the airport at an estimated cost of Rs 270 crore. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will inaugurate the flyover on Saturday.
In addition to the flyover, the completion of the signal-free Dhaula Kuan-Airport corridor will involve widening the six-lane corridor to eight lanes, building a three-lane flyover from Janakpuri Road merging with NH8, three passenger underpasses, two vehicular underpasses, and a footover bridge for pedestrians.
The authority will also build a three-lane vehicular underpass at Parade Road junction to make sure that the stretch between both the places, which sees traffic of 3 lakh "Passenger Car Units" per day becomes signal-free.
The project will face major challenges in the coming days due to traffic management, acquiring security clearances, presence of large number of Civil and Defence utilities, and shifting of Defence infrastructure. Despite security restrictions and environmental prohibitions that stopped work on the flyover for 136 days, it was completed in a duration of 136 working days. This project is one of nine projects being implemented by NHAI for de-congesting Delhi-NCR.
These include the 22-km, six-lane elevated corridor on Gurugram-Sohna Road on which work has started; an eight-lane Delhi-Panipat highway from Mukarba Chowk to Panipat on NH-1, which is nearly 48 per cent completed; the 29-km, eight-lane access controlled Dwarka Expressway on which work has started; package II, III and IV of Delhi-Meerut Expressway, 36 per cent, 76 per cent and 32 per cent of which is completed respectively; four-laning of the 124-km Khekra–EPE junction to Shamli-Saharanpur (NH-709 B); Rangpuri Bypass to connect Dwarka/NH-08 with Vasant Kunj-Nelson Mandela Road, which is in DPR stage; a 75-km Urban Extension Road (UER-2) third Ring Road for Delhi under Bharatmala, which is in DPR stage; and the 31.3-km, six-lane access controlled corridor from Akshardham NH24 junction to EPE junction on Baghpat road. The aforementioned projects come at an estimated combined cost of Rs 28,500 crore.
