Reality check at Sarita Vihar underpass: Long tailbacks hold up traffic in S Delhi

There seems to be no escape from long tailbacks in south Delhi, especially after the inauguration of the one-odd kilometre long underpass tunnel at Sarita Vihar.

On Monday morning, it was appraisal day for the Sarita Vihar underpass and officials of Delhi Traffic Police were deployed at crucial points. They were there to assess the traffic situation in the morning hours (8.30 am to 10 am) of the first weekday since the underpass was opened for commuters on December 19.

However, by 9.15 am, the traffic was thrown out-of-gear and the worst hit areas were South and South-east Delhi, including Greater Kailash, Nehru Place, Kalkaji and Ma Anandmayee Marg. Once stuck, commuters started looking for escape routes and penetrated into the facility links, choking the lanes and blocks of CR Park and GK II.

Later, it took a few hours for traffic officials to bring the situation under control. “The traffic snarls on Friday and Saturday, especially in CR Park and Nehru Place, happened because people were keen to try the new underpass but were unaware as to what would it lead them to and whether they would have a smooth ride to their destinations,” said BS Jaiswal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic/ Southern Range). He further said, Delhi Traffic Police are now planning to introduce signages to guide commuters at the affected zones.

However, experts opine that employing more traffic officials to control the crisis in south Delhi is a temporary solution which will not work in the long-run. The traffic problem which south Delhi is combating every day is inherent in the piecemeal planning process. “Under this scheme, traffic woes of one zone are solved by diverting a share of the volume to other areas which are relatively clear,” said Dr PK Sarkar, head of the department of transport planning at the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi.

He further said that for plans concerned with traffic engineering, one has to go for area-scale analysis, which takes into consideration surrounding land-use. The corridor-based analysis, largely dependent on piecemeal planning, cannot solve the traffic problems in Delhi any longer. The underpass was meant to decrease the travel time between Okhla and Noida but it is not that only people travelling between the two said destinations are using it. Commuters from Chhatarpur, Lado Sarai, Saket and Malviya Nagar can use the underpass to reach Nehru Place directly avoiding the already congested Modi Mill area, informed a traffic official.