After 4 deadlines, Hero Honda Chowk flyover set to open by month-end

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is planning to open the Jaipur-Delhi carriageway of the Hero Honda Chowk flyover by March 31, more than four months

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is planning to open the Jaipur-Delhi carriageway of the Hero Honda Chowk flyover by March 31, more than four months after it was closed for repair works, with four deadlines having elapsed since. However, NHAI officials said they are optimistic about allowing traffic on the carriageway by the end of this month as the repairs and testing have been completed.

HT Image

In 2019, a large chunk of concrete fell off the surface of the flyover, leaving a large hole on the road the same spot where a hole had first appeared in April 2018. Around 15 metres of the Jaipur-Delhi side has been rebuilt by the NHAI.

The highways authority had previously planned to open the road by December 1, 2019, January-end, March 1 and March 15. Officials said that the repair work was completed in February, necessary tests have been carried out and the flyover will be operational by the end of March.

The test report of the flyover is being examined carefully, said the NHAI official. Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI Gurugram, said, “I am hopeful that the flyover will start by March-end. This will be done after going through the recommendation of a report on testing of the flyover.”

Rakesh Mathur, deputy manager of Valecha Engineering Limited, the contractor for the project, said, “Repairing (the damaged portion) didn’t take much time. We had lost more than a month to the construction ban during extreme pollution days.”

Also, the flyover has gone through extreme testing, which was the most time-consuming part of the process. “We had repaired the flyover in 45 days, but the flyover testing, which started in February, has taken time,” added Mathur.

The NHAI contractor further said that detailed testing of the flyover has been done to ensure that no cracks on the flyover appear again. Also, the testing of the flyover was not in their hands and until NHAI goes through the flyover test reports, the flyover cannot be made operational, the contractor said.

Commuters who travel on this route regularly said that they have been facing a lot of congestion since one side of the carriageway was closed for traffic movement. Ishan Kumar, a resident of Sector 14, said, “During the peak hours, there would be traffic congestion on this stretch even though there were police personnel to facilitate traffic. The U-turns would get choked, leading to chaos on this stretch.”

The eight-lane, 1.4-kilometre-long flyover was constructed as part of a three-layer crossing — flyover, underpass and surface roads — at Hero Honda Chowk. The construction of the ₹197.84-crore project began in November 2014 and it was opened to the public in 2017.