Ghaziabad: Making another effort to curb the menace of traffic congestion in inner parts of the district, the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA), on Tuesday, proposed to make the shopping hub Rajnagar District Centre (RDC) area a 'vehicle free zone'. GDA officials said that the move will not only end traffic woes but will also benefit pedestrians visiting the area.
"The RDC area has over the years started witnessing massive traffic jams which are mostly because of irregular traffic movement and haphazard parking. This causes problems to the visitors to walk through and in order to come up with the problem, we have sought to make the area a no vehicle zone while a DPR has also been proposed for this. The move will surely end traffic woes in the area and will gradually increase the footfall. Efforts will also be made for further beautification of the area in future," said Anita C Meshram, Commissioner, Meerut Zone and Chairman GDA.
Spread across an area of 20 acres, the RDC which caters mall, showrooms, banks, retail outlets and prominent food chains draws a huge crowd and vehicles but the roads are mostly spilled with vehicles with pedestrians facing problems to even walk through.
The residents have been making repeated complaints to the concerned authorities but nothing concrete ever happened. The GDA had also planned to build an underground and multilevel parking in the area but no agency showed interest and the projects were scrapped. Now the GDA board has sought another measure to address the problem to traffic congestion in the area which might give a much needed relief to the frequent visitors.
The decision was taken in GDA's 153th board meeting on Tuesday. Apart from this there were several other infrastructural and development works which got approved in the meeting.
"Around 37 proposals were discussed in the meeting, among which the GDA board approved 26 proposals while four proposals were rejected by the board. The board has also sent five proposals to the government while two proposals were partially revised. Among the other proposals which got approved were sanctioning the online approval of map within 15 days, construction of new authority's office to be built in Madhuban Bapudham enclave, leasing out of the Nehru stadium in Ghaziabad to private contractor, land use change for PM Housing Scheme, and others" added Meshram.
The district magistrate of Ghaziabad Ritu Maheshwari, the VC of GDA Kanchan Verma, Secretary of GDA Santosh Kumar Rai, GDA Board member Himanshu Mittal and many other officials participated in meeting.