NOIDA: While Noida might be one of the fastest developing industrial and technological hubs in the country, the mere task of getting into the city for work is an arduous task for the thousands of people who commute to the city for work every day.
There are six main entries connecting Delhi, Ghaziabad and Faridabad with Noida, all of which have never ending traffic jams during rush hours that can stretch to over 2km. According to the city’s traffic police there are over 4,00,000 vehicles that move regularly between Noida and Delhi alone and the increasing vehicular pressure on these links between Noida and other parts of Delhi NCR is the primary reason for this regular traffic disaster. According to city traffic police out of 4 lakh plus vehicles that commute to Noida from other parts of the city, the DND alone sees over 1 lakh cars every day. The reason for this increased pressure on DND is quite simply the fact that the other links between Noida and Delhi aren’t as well maintained.
Traffic coming from DND has a ripple effect on traffic at the entry to Noida at Sector 14A since it spills out and congests that route too. “DND is much better maintained than the other routes between Delhi and Noida. The road has 8 lanes and doesn’t have any pedestrians thus allowing smooth flow of traffic. The other routes are comparatively in a state of disrepair and have traffic bottlenecks and as a result DND is suffering due to increased vehicular pressure,” said Saifuddin Beg, chief traffic inspector (Noida).Rising vehicular pressure on links between Noida and other parts of Delhi-NCR has resulted in a series of bottlenecks and daily traffic jams on them due to a lack of required upgrading of roads. For instance the Okhla Barrage that connects Kalindi Kunj in Delhi with Noida and Greater Noida was constructed 25 years ago, but no repair work had been initiated until earlier this month.
“The main problem with these links is the fact that weren’t designed to handle the kind of vehicular pressure that they are subjected to currently. These roads need to be widened to allow smoother flow of traffic,” said Beg.While work on the Okhla Barrage has resumed, much needed work on other routes still needs to be initiated on other routes such as the NH24 which connects Model Town and Indirapuram in Ghaziabad with Noida. According to the traffic police the work on this route has suffered due to lack of coordination between the three civic bodies involved: Noida Authority, Greater Noida Authority and Ghaziabad Development Authority. “The NH24 urgently needs to be widened into an 8 lane route to accommodate more traffic to correspond with the rapid development of Ghaziabad,” added BegAccording to the city’s traffic police, the NIB Chowk on the NH24 bypass is another point which sees daily traffic snarls due to major engineering faults on the road. “A series of cuts and t points clustered extremely close to each other resulting in traffic pouring into the road from all directions and hinder traffic movement,” said an official.Less major routes which connect parts of east Delhi with Noida such as the Ashok Nagar and sector 11 link with Noida are also congested daily due to narrow roads which are not equipped to handle the increased traffic coming through to Noida.
Aniruddha GhosalAniruddha Ghosal | Jan 30, 2012, 07.21AM IST
