No respite from traffic jams at Ashram till at least Dec

Ashram, which is one of the busiest stretches in the Capital, sees over 350,000 vehicles passing every day during peak rush hours of morning and evening.

The traffic mess at the busy Ashram Chowk is expected to continue till December this year with the Public Works Department (PWD) saying that it will miss the August deadline for the construction of a 750-metre underpass at the key traffic intersection, work on which has been going on since December 2019.

Construction work delayed at Ashram Chowk, in New Delhi (Sanjeev Verma/ Hindustan Times)

To be sure this was the third deadline for the project that the department failed to meet. The first deadline for the project was set for December 2020, the second for April 2021. Having failed to finish the project, the PWD last revised the deadline to August 2021.

People who commute daily through the stretch say it has been a never ending traffic chaos at the Ashram intersection.

Ashram, which is one of the busiest stretches in the Capital, sees over 350,000 vehicles passing every day during peak rush hours of morning and evening. Even though the work was still on to construct the underpass that connects Nizamuddin Railway Bridge and CSIR Apartments at the Ashram intersection, the government in February simultaneously launched work on extending the Ashram flyover on Ring Road. The two projects running together have made Ashram that connects south and central Delhi, and virtually serves as the connection for two NCR cities Noida and Faridabad — a traffic nightmare

Besides prolonged and haphazard construction, poor site management and extension of barricades for building the underpass, have made the situation worse.

Senior PWD officials have cited ban on construction activities due to air pollution in November 2019, assembly polls in February 2020, pandemic-induced lockdowns and labour shortage and financial crunch as some of the reasons that delayed work on the crucial project.

A senior PWD official expressed the hope that they will be able to meet the latest deadline. “The delay this time has been caused due to shortage of labour. The second Covid wave has impacted our functioning on all the projects and we are lagging behind the deadlines. Now, the new deadlines have been made keeping in mind all parameters and if things go on smoothly, we will complete the construction at Ashram Chowk and underpass weeks before this year ends,” the official said asking not to be named.

A Delhi government spokesperson did not comment on the matter.

A traffic police officer said, “The traffic plan for the extension of the Ashram flyover includes the placement of barricades on the Kilokri side and on Maharani Bagh side of Ring Road, and this has caused a bottleneck.”

People who commute daily through the stretch say it has been a never ending traffic chaos at the Ashram intersection. At first, it was the Metro construction, then the closure of the Kalindi Kunj border because of the Shaheen Bagh protest and now, the construction work has been hampering traffic movement here, said Vaibhav Chadha.

“This stretch is always the problem area. I don’t know when and how the problem will be resolved. In order to get to work every day, I have to leave almost home an hour earlier. My whole schedule goes for a toss,” said Chadha.

Experts said the situation has turned worse with the work on the underpass and flyover extension projects have overlapped.

“The construction work here at Ashram has been a major problem for the commuters and even if the work at the Ashram underpass is completed, I feel it is not going to cause respite to the commuters who take this route until the work for the extension of the Ashram flyover is completed,” said Dr. S Velmurugan, Chief Scientist, Central Road Research Institute (CRRI). He said the the high traffic volume on Mathura Road and Ring Road should have made the completion of the Ashram underpass project a top priority for the construction agency.