When the Barapullah elevated road was conceived, Delhi was preparing for the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the objective was to create a signal-free corridor linking east and south Delhi while easing pressure on the existing road network. But the nearly decade-long delay in completing Phase III, which opened on Wednesday, has meant that a project designed around the traffic conditions and projections of the late 2000s has opened in a very different Delhi. The result was clear when a promised 15-minute commute turned into a long ordeal on the first day.
The Barapullah corridor was planned in four phases. Phase I, between Sarai Kale Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, began in December 2008 and was completed in 2010 ahead of the Commonwealth Games. Phase II extended the corridor towards INA, while Phase III was planned to connect Sarai Kale Khan with Mayur Vihar across the Yamuna. Phase IV was envisaged as an eventual extension towards the airport. The complete corridor was initially expected to be operational by 2017. The construction of Phase IV has not started yet and the plan is under review.
Land dispute stalled final 900 metres
Phase III, like the rest of the corridor, did not meet the timeline set for it. Construction started in April 2015 and the scheduled completion date was October 2017. The main construction progressed substantially, but work stopped before a 2.5-acre patch of private agricultural land on the eastern bank of the Yamuna could be acquired, which stalled the construction of the last 900 metres of the 10km flyover from Mayur Vihar to AIIMS.
{{/usCountry}}Phase III, like the rest of the corridor, did not meet the timeline set for it. Construction started in April 2015 and the scheduled completion date was October 2017. The main construction progressed substantially, but work stopped before a 2.5-acre patch of private agricultural land on the eastern bank of the Yamuna could be acquired, which stalled the construction of the last 900 metres of the 10km flyover from Mayur Vihar to AIIMS.
{{/usCountry}}The problem arose because land that had been assumed to be available for construction had actually been de-notified in 1995 and returned to its original owners. “A joint inspection by DDA, PWD and revenue officials in July 2015 identified the issue, after construction had already begun. The landowners subsequently approached the Delhi high court and the formal acquisition process began only after negotiations failed,” a former PWD official said.
The result was that a project that had already acquired much of its physical form remained stuck for years over the missing section. By the time the land issue and subsequent litigation were resolved in 2023 and the final clearance came the following year, the traffic conditions that the project was originally intended to address had changed considerably.
According to VAHAN portal data, Delhi’s registered vehicle population was around 5.5 million in 2008, when Phase I construction began, and crossed 10 million by 2017, around the original period in which the complete Barapullah corridor was expected to be operational. Today, the registered stock is around 8.8 million after large-scale deregistration of old vehicles (which may only be on paper). While that number may be deflated because of the automatic de-registration, there is another source of traffic surge: vehicles from Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, Faridabad and other parts of the NCR, where population has boomed.
While Phase III stood incomplete, the eastward spread of Delhi’s suburbs, across east Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad, added vehicles that would use this stretch, at a pace that was not anticipated. Between 20217 and 2026, registered vehicles in Noida rose from around 600,000 to 1.3 million while vehicles in Ghaziabad grew from 900,000 to 1.65 million.
The Phase III design was based on studies undertaken years before construction was completed. The 2012 pre-feasibility exercise considered three alternative alignments and examined factors including connectivity, constructability, safety, future extendibility and traffic movement. It ultimately selected the Mayur Vihar Phase I alignment. The 2018 SIA noted that by then, the alignment had been finalised and could not realistically be changed because construction was already substantially complete.
While no traffic projections are available for the current stretch, based on current volumes, experts said the original plan should have factored in growth trajectories.
S Velmurugan, former chief scientist and head of the Traffic Engineering and Safety Division at the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), said the corridor would ideally have required greater capacity if it were being designed against current traffic volumes.
“The design should have been at least 4+4 lanes, considering the given volume and at least 3% per year vehicle growth rate, but maybe that could not have been anticipated way back in 2008-2010,” he said.
An elevated corridor cannot be widened after construction the way a normal road can. “Once the piers are made, these are designed for a certain traffic load, especially on elevated corridors, the design cannot be changed or updated midway. Any update is next to impossible,” Velmurugan said.
Velmurugan said there was nevertheless an opportunity to address safety and operational issues before the corridor opened. PWD and the construction agency, he said, should have carried out a design-stage road safety audit, particularly to identify sharp angles and other geometric concerns. A pre-opening safety audit or test could also have identified problems before the road was opened to full traffic.
PWD did not respond to queries at the time of publishing.
With the structure now complete, however, the focus has to shift from infrastructure management to traffic management, he said.
“We need to now accept that no infrastructure management can be done now and effective traffic management is the only solution. This could include controlled entry of vehicles, phased release of traffic and signal management at critical points,” he said, adding that traffic police deployment can be used to prevent excessive traffic from entering the corridor simultaneously and creating bottlenecks.
“Navigation platforms such as Google Maps could distribute traffic more evenly by recommending alternative routes instead of directing a disproportionate volume towards Barapullah simply because it offers the shortest theoretical route,” said Velmurugan.
He also cautioned against setting unrealistic expectations about travel times. The PWD’s initial’s promise of travelling from Mayur Vihar to AIIMS in 15 minutes, he said, could raise expectations that the present traffic conditions may not support. With effective traffic management, a 25-30 minute journey would still represent a substantial reduction in travel time without promising an unrealistic outcome that depends entirely on an uncongested network.