NEW DELHI: After several flip-flops on the widening of the Delhi border-Dasna stretch on NH-24, the road transport and highway ministry has finally moved the proposal to convert it into an eight-lane corridor. The ministry has proposed to fund the project and the work would be awarded in six to eight months.
The widening of the 20km corridor, which is used by over 2 lakh vehicles on a weekday, will bring relief to commuters who often get caught in long jams. The ministry moved the plan after a high-level meeting, which was presided over by minister of state Jitin Prasada, in the last week of March. "We have asked NHAI to exclude this stretch from the Meerut Expressway project, so that work can start soon. We had been receiving complaints of major traffic jams during morning and evening peak hours," Prasada told TOI.
Though the highway ministry had originally proposed to carry out the work on contract and a tender was also floated, the plan was scrapped later. NHAI had proposed to widen this portion as part of the Delhi-Meerut expressway project on build, operate and transfer (BOT-toll) mode, said a source. In that case, private developers would have financed the entire project.
"Since NHAI said the expressway project might take time, the Delhi-Dasna stretch widening will not be carried out as part of this project. We have to address the problems faced by commuters on priority, and cannot wait for the project to take off," said Prasada. The move will also be viewed favourably by commuters as they won't have to pay toll for using the state-funded road. The stretch between the Nizamuddin bridge and the Delhi border, which is also part of NH-24, has already been widened to eight lanes.
The NH-24 corridor between Delhi and Ghaziabad has several residential colonies, including Indirapuram, Vaishali, Vasundhara, Vijay Nagar, Kaushambi, Shipra Sun City and Sector-62 (Noida). People living in Ghaziabad have to travel to Delhi for work and studies. And this is the only corridor that provides connectivity between these colonies and central and south Delhi.
A 2008 study by RITES showed that NH-24 had the second highest traffic volume of all the roads providing connectivity to the capital. On an average, 1.57 lakh vehicles crossed the Nizamuddin bridge in 2007 and 80% of them were from outside Delhi.
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