Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari inaugurated a four-lane flyover on Saturday at the Dhaula Kuan junction on National Highway 8 in New Delhi.
The flyover is expected to reduce waiting time at the traffic light by 30 minutes during peak hours. Earlier, it took around 10-30 minutes to cross this three-kilometre stretch due to frequent traffic jams.
NH 8 is the prime link providing connectivity to IGI Airport from Delhi and NCR. The work of this four-lane flyover was completed in a record time of just 136 working days.
National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has taken up development of a signal-free corridor of eight-lane from Dhaula Kuan interchange to Airport at an estimated cost of Rs.270 crore. The work on the project commenced in March 2018.
Besides this newly inaugurated flyover, the complete signal-free Dhaula Kuan - Airport corridor project consists of widening of Dhaula Kuan - IGI corridor from 6-lanes to 8-lanes, a three-lane flyover from Janakpuri road to merge with NH-8, three-lane vehicular underpass at Parade Road junction, 3 PUPs, 2 VUPs and a FOB for pedestrians.
Currently, there are nine projects being implemented in order to reduce congestion in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR). This includes 22 kilometres 6-lane elevated corridor on Gurugram-Sohna Road costing Rs 2000 Crore, 8-lane Delhi-Panipat highway from Mukarba Chowk to Panipat on NH-1 being constructed at a cost of Rs 2300 and nearly 48 per cent done, and the 29 km, 8 lane access controlled Dwarka Expressway costing about Rs 9500 crore on which work has started.
The package II, III and IV of Delhi-Meerut Expressway costing Rs 5900 Crore, where package II is 36 % done, package III in 76% done and package IV is 32 % done. The 4-laning of 124 km Khekra - Eastern Peripheral Expressway junction to Shamli-Saharanpur (NH-709 B) at a cost of about Rs 1200 Crore and Rangpuri Bypass to connect Dwarka/NH-08 with Vasant Kunj-Nelson Mandela Road at a cost of Rs 1000 Crore, which is in DPR stage.
The other projects includes the 6-lane access controlled corridor from Akshardham NH24 Junction to EPE Junction on Baghpat Road at a cost of about Rs 2600 Crore and the 75 km Urban Extension Road (UER-2) third Ring Road for Delhi under Bharatmala to be developed at a cost of Rs 4000 Crore which is in DPR stage and the 31.3 km.