Delhi to get elevated road corridor

The national capital is set to join the league of cities like Bangkok and Tokyo with Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit announcing construction of an elevated corridor over the ring road to decongest the city roads, which carry nearly 100,000 vehicles a day from neighbouring cities.

"Nearly one million people come to Delhi everyday from adjoining cities like Gurgaon and Noida and 100,000 vehicles criss-cross the city everyday. It is imperative to have an elevated corridor along the present ring road," Dikshit said at a function to release the India Infrastructure Report, jointly prepared by the Infrastructure Development Finance Company, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

While Dikshit did not disclose the scale of investment in the proposed corridor, she said the Infrastructure Leasing and Finance Services was preparing the detailed plan for the implementation of the project. Of all the cities in the country, Delhi has the highest number of vehicles plying on its roads.

Dikshit said the national capital had more traffic signals than the entire country put together.

She said there was a need to segregate heavy and light vehicles on the roads and the elevated corridors through slip roads would help in reducing the traffic problem.

The funding mechanism for the project has not been worked out but the Delhi chief minister sought to rope in financial institutions in implementing the project.

She said high capacity buses would also be introduced during the year, which would help in decongesting the roads.

The Delhi chief minister said the state government was planning to change the water distribution model, which would aim to reduce leakage, estimated at over 40 per cent of the supply.

"In the next two-three years, we should have 24x7x365 days of water. Delhi is not short of water but the distribution system is bad with over 40 per cent leakage, like there was in electricity," Dikshit said.

She also said there was a disparity in the availability of water in the city. While the per person water availability in Leutyen's Delhi was estimated at 362 litres a day, in other parts of it was less than one-tenth at 32 litres per person a day.

The chief minister also announced that her government would try to work out a new waste disposal system for the city.

Expressing her unhappiness with the bureaucratic system, she said the bureaucracy often delayed implementation of projects, which caused heavy cost overruns.