Sirhaul underpass finally gets power line, lights to be turned on today: NHAI

The underpass will be electrified from Friday after the NHAI got Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam’s (DHBVN) permission for electricity connection there on Thursday, said the NHAI officials

Commuters at the Sirhaul underpass near Ambience Mall on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway will be able to use the underpass at night from Friday, after a month-long delay, as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has finally got an electricity connection there, officials said on Thursday.

The underpass near Ambience Mall on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway will be electrified from Friday, said officials. (Yogendra Kumar/HT PHOTO)

The underpass will be electrified from Friday after the NHAI got Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam’s (DHBVN) permission for electricity connection there on Thursday, said the NHAI officials. The highway authority used generator sets for lighting the road till now, and vehicular movements were closed there from 10pm every night.

Saurabh Singhal, NHAI consultant, said that they had applied for the electricity connections a few months ago. “We have received the permission for the electricity connection on Thursday, and now the underpass will be operational during night as well, as there will be light all the time. We were forced to close it for vehicular movement during the night hours due to the lack of power connection, but it will remain operational now,” he said.

The initial deadline for the completion of work at the underpass was September 2020, after it began on March 5, 2019. However, because of the government-imposed construction ban later that year due to pollution, and subsequently the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, the project got delayed several times. The length of the U-turn underpass is 377 metres, and the entire stretch including access roads is 1.5-kilometre-long with a 559-metre-long and seven-metre-wide service road. The width of the underpass is 14 metres and the vertical clearance of the tunnel is 5.5 metres. A speed limit of 40 kilometre per hour (kmph) has been set on the facility.

A 455-metre-long flyover at Shankar Chowk, which was opened earlier in XXX (Month/Year), was also built as part of this project and a speed limit of 30kmph has been set for the grade-separated flyover.