1 person is killed every five days

Opened a year ago, the 27.7 km long expressway on National Highway 8 has cut travelling time between the Capital and Gurgaon by an hour. But the high-speed corridor has also claimed 78 lives, report Sidhartha Roy and Sanjeev K.Ahuja.

Opened a year ago, the 27.7 km long expressway on National Highway 8 has cut travelling time between the Capital and Gurgaon by an hour. But the high-speed corridor has also claimed 78 lives.

HT Image

About half of the 78 killed were pedestrians. The nine flyovers on the stretch allow vehicles to drive at 90 kmph but facilities for pedestrians are negligible.

There aren’t enough foot-over-bridges, subways and median dividers even as a life is lost here every fifth day.

A spokesman of DS Constructions, which has constructed and manages the expressway, said it has fulfilled its contractual obligations to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) by building two footover bridges and an equal number of subways. The NHAI, on the other hand, is busy tendering and conducting studies.

It will take at least six more months for five more proposed footover bridges to come up and locations for the underpasses are still being planned, an NHAI spokesman said.

Mixing of slow moving traffic such as two wheelers, which are not allowed on the expressway, with fast moving cars can lead to fatal accidents.

The traffic police said it was the job of DS Constructions to segregate traffic. The DS spokesman claimed 500 traffic marshals had been deployed.