Gridlock continues at UP Gate as alternative route near Hindon canal also shut - Hindustan Times
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Gridlock continues at UP Gate as alternative route near Hindon canal also shut

By, Ghaziabad
Jun 05, 2020 10:55 PM IST

Snarls and chaos continued to be the order of the day during peak hours at UP Gate, the Delhi-Ghaziabad border point, as thousands of commuters got stuck there again on Friday morning. The police personnel from both Ghaziabad and Delhi said they only conducted random checks, while the officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said they have initiated repair work on a 200m broken patch of the highway to bring major relief to commuters.

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The UP Gate gets traffic coming in Mohan Nagar Link Road and Hindon elevated road, besides the regular traffic from Indirapuram and Noida and long distance commuters. The convergence of all this traffic below the UP Gate flyover leads to jam-packed conditions every day, which have only been compounded by the barricades erected by the police on both sides of the border.

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“I got stuck in a jam when I reached the UP Gate flyover around 8.30am. The closure of the flyover and the broken patch of the highway are posing major problems for commuters travelling from Ghaziabad to Delhi. The repair work on the broken patch is underway, but seeing the number of workers deployed, I doubt if it will be finished within the week, as promised by NHAI,” Ajay Singhal, a resident of Indirapuram who works as construction engineer in Gurugram, said.

The flyover access is also barricaded, leaving commuters with just a narrow service lane below the flyover to move through.

“The police have also barricaded the canal road, near the Ghazipur landfill. Generally, commuters from Indirapuram take this road as an alternative to reach the highway near Ghazipur, there bypassing UP Gate,” he said.

“Police on both sides of the border have put up barricades which leads to major bottlenecks at UP Gate underpass. Generally, the passes checking starts by 8.30am, the beginning of the peak hours, and this further adds to the chaos. If commuters are able to cross UP Gate by 8am, then they may not face jams,” Mohan Sangwan, a resident of Indirapuram, said.

Deputy commissioner of police (east Delhi) Jasmeet Singh said police deployed at the Ghazipur border (near UP Gate) have been checking motorists for movement passes and identity cards, but only on a random basis to prevent snarls.

“Whenever the volume of traffic increases, we relax the checking and clear the traffic. Sometimes, barricades are removed to provide free passage to ambulances. During the morning peak hours, we allow the vehicles to use the expressway lanes so that office-goers do not get stuck in the gridlock. Once the jam reduces, we block the road again,” Singh said.

The Ghaziabad police said it has also take up random checking during peak hours and the canal road is presently barricaded.

“The canal road also leads to Khoda locality, which was sealed as containment zone after several cases of Covid-19 were reported from there. Hence, the road has been barricaded. We have not barricaded the flyover and that was done by NHAI for the purpose of taking up repair works,” Anshu Jain, circle officer (Indirapuram), said.

The officials of the NHAI denied that they have blocked the UP Gate flyover.

“We have not put up any boulders to block the flyover. We will clarify this with the Ghaziabad police. We have started the repair of the broken patch and it will be completed in another three or four days. We are going to level the highway and expressway lanes. We are also trying to open the under-construction lanes of the Hindon bridge near the flyover. Once that is done, within the next four or five days, commuters will have access to five new lanes on each side,” Mudit Garg, project director, NHAI, said.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Peeyush Khandelwal writes on a range of issues in western Uttar Pradesh – from crime, to development authorities and from infrastructure to transport. Based in Ghaziabad, he has been a journalist for almost a decade.

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