Delhi’s Bhairon Marg underpass opens for two-way traffic

Officials said that temporary cones will remain affixed to allow two-way movement on the 110m stretch till the larger tunnel is ready.

The Delhi Public Works Department (PWD) has partially opened a section of the Bhairon Marg underpass for two-way traffic between Bhairon Marg/Mathura Road and Ring Road/Sarai Kale Khan, said officials aware of the matter, nearly a year-and-a-half after the rest of the Pragati Maidan tunnel network was inaugurated.

The underpass will help relieve some of the traffic pressure along the busy corridor. (Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

The underpass comprises two separate parallel tunnel sections: a two-lane segment and a three-lane one. Officials said that the two-lane section was thrown open for traffic on Monday evening, with temporary cones affixed to allow two-way movement on the 110m stretch till the larger tunnel is ready.

Officials said the underpass will help relieve some of the traffic pressure along the busy corridor.

“The opening of the underpass will reduce the traffic bound for Ghaziabad/Noida on the IP Estate section of the Ring Road. The traffic on this road is very heavy, and during peak hours it turns into a major congestion node. The overall project will help Ghaziabad-bound traffic to have signal-free access right till the doorstep,” an official said, on condition of anonymity.

However, experts warned that traffic on the single lanes of the underpass will have to be streamlined and channelised, otherwise it may lead to a bottleneck.

The PWD official quoted above said that the wider three-lane segment will take several more months to open, with authorities to restore the tunnel after extensive damage during the floods in July.

During a spot check on Tuesday morning, HT found commuters were largely unaware that the new tunnel had been opened, with key signboards still to be installed, even though security personnel had been deployed at the two exit points — one at Bhairon Marg and one at Ring Road — to guide traffic inwards.

Ramesh Ahuja, who was driving from central Delhi towards Noida, said the facility will be of a great help to commuters. “To drive from Bhairon Marg to Sarai Kale Khan, one had to earlier take a left towards ITO, drive for around 150m, and then take a U-turn back towards Sarai Kale Khan. The new underpass will greatly help commuters. However, there is a danger that this single-lane underpass may get choked during rush hours,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dr S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of traffic engineering and safety division at Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) said the aim to make the Bhairon Marg-Ring Road intersection signal free will not be fully achieved unless work on the underpass is completed. “One lane can only carry a maximum of 1,300 vehicles per hour, and departments will have to deploy marshals to streamline the flow of traffic so that a new bottleneck is not formed. The commuters will have to be channelised and speed will be constrained as there is no luxury of additional lane for sideways movement,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Pragati Maidan integrated transit corridor — comprising a 1.3-km tunnel and five underpasses — in June 2022, four-and-a-half years after work on the project began.

The underpass was originally expected to be completed entirely by December 2022, but remains a work in progress — PWD had earlier said that the three-lane segment continues to face multiple technical issues, and the progress of box pushing under the existing railway tracks is not progressing on schedule due to the uneven settlement of the underlying land. The stretch was also damaged by floodwaters last July, further pushing back the timescale.

Subsequently, PWD on February 3 this year issued a notice to L&T, the contractor for the project, asking why action should not be initiated against the firm for financial and reputational losses incurred by the government and its agencies due to the inability to complete the project on time.

L&T, in turn, made a counter claim of ₹500 crore against the agency.

HT reached out to PWD for on the matter, officials there did not respond to queries on the status of the legal tussle.