Phases 2, 4 of Delhi-Meerut Expressway open amid chaos and confusion

Ghaziabad: Roadblocks, jaywalking and traffic violations plagued phases 2 and 4 of the Delhi Meerut Expressway (DME), which were opened for the public on the first day on Thursday, a spot visit by an HT team revealed

Ghaziabad: Roadblocks, jaywalking and traffic violations plagued phases 2 and 4 of the Delhi Meerut Expressway (DME), which were opened for the public on the first day on Thursday, a spot visit by an HT team revealed.

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The toll collection is yet to start at the six-lane dedicated access-controlled expressway till the rates finalised get the approval of the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH).

Many commuters, who had to take the left lane of the DME to go to Hapur, which falls on phase 3 of the expressway, took the wrong lane and inadvertently went towards Meerut expressway from Dasna.

“The issue cropped up due to confusing signage. Many commuters drove straight thinking it was the way to Hapur but the lane took them towards Meerut expressway. Many returned to the DME by driving on the wrong side. There were also instances of wrong side driving on the Meerut expressway. Many vehicles were found speeding,” said Satendra Raghav, a resident of Govindpuram.

According to officials, the speed limit for four-wheelers is 70kmph in Delhi while it is 100kmph in the jurisdiction of Uttar Pradesh.

Several boulders were also spotted which were put up as road blockade at the DME’s interchange with the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) at Dasna. As a result, many commuters coming from Meerut and going towards EPE had to move down from the DME at Dasna and again take the EPE interchange at Dasna to continue their journey towards EPE.

The interchange is designed to provide seamless connectivity between the two expressways at Dasna. The blockades, however, disrupted seamless traffic movement.

Officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said the blockades were put up as toll collection is yet to start at the DME. Commuters without an entry at the DME toll booths would have faced issues while exiting the toll plazas at EPE.

“The issue will be resolved as soon as the toll plazas become operational at DME. We are expecting the MoRTH to approve the toll rates, following which the NHAI will issue a notification. The process is expected to get clearance in a couple of days. We are also remove the current signage and install a new signage that will properly guide commuters travelling towards Hapur as well as Meerut,” said Mudit Garg, project director of the NHAI.

He added that for overspeeding and wrong-side driving, he has spoken to the district administrations of Ghaziabad and Meerut. “The district will deploy its enforcement vehicles and details of erring vehicles detected by the automatic number plate reader (ANPR) will be sent to them for issuing challans. We have about 200 cameras installed in phases 1, 2 and 4 and 144 of these are functioning as ANPRs,” added Garg.

Jaywalking was spotted at two places in Vijay Nagar. There is no foot overbridge here and an underpass constructed here is hardly used by locals.

“The project for putting up additional fencing of 1.5km on each side will be completed soon to stop instances of jaywalking. We did not construct a foot overbridge as the area has high-tension electricity cables passing across the DME at Vijay Nagar. We are monitoring vehicular movement and all issues which crop up will be resolved once more people start using the DME,” said Garg.

While the 19.2 kilometre-phase 2 connects the UP Gate to Dasna, the phase 4 of the DME, spanning for about 32 kilometres, connects Dasna to Meerut. The expressway will help bring down the travel time from Delhi to Meeut to about 50 minutes.