Three-lane Barapullah Phase-III flyover merges into two-lane stretch; traffic police seek redesign

The three-lane Barapullah Phase-III flyover is merging with a two-lane stretch of the existing corridor near Sundial Park, while traffic from two other three-lane approaches also converge at the same point, with Delhi Traffic Police urging the junction be redesigned to ease congestion, officials said on Tuesday.

The traffic police has asked the Delhi Public Works Department (PWD) to urgently modify the merger point, where the newly-opened phase-III flyover joins the existing Barapullah corridor, saying the sharp and abrupt design of the junction is aggravating congestion on the busy route.

The Barapullah Phase-III flyover was opened to public last week, but the traffic situation on the new stretch deteriorated soon after opening. By Thursday evening, commuters travelling the nearly 8-km stretch between Safdarjung Hospital and Sarai Kale Khan were taking more than an hour to complete the journey, officials said.

A joint inspection conducted on October 1 by senior traffic police and PWD officials identified several geometric and traffic-flow related problems at the merger point near Sundial Park.

In a letter to the PWD, the traffic police said the configuration is resulting in “significant traffic congestion”, particularly because of the exceptionally high traffic volume on the newly-opened corridor.

A drone survey conducted by traffic police showed the extent of the problem at the junction, where multiple traffic streams converge within a limited road width.

The phase-III flyover has three lanes. At the same point, another three lanes of traffic coming from the Sundial side towards Sarai Kale Khan and Ring Road merge with the corridor. Three more lanes carrying traffic from the Ashram and DND side also join the existing Barapullah corridor.

The existing flyover, however, narrows to two lanes at the said stretch, resulting in a sharp mismatch between the number of lanes feeding into the junction and the available downstream capacity, police said.

The physical design of the merger further compounds the problem. Traffic police said the new flyover meets the existing flyover near Sundial through a relatively sharp or rectangular alignment rather than a smooth curve.

This results in an abrupt merging of traffic and creates a bottleneck at the junction, the letter said.

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Police said the configuration was particularly problematic because of the heavy traffic volume being generated by the newly-opened phase-III corridor. Vehicles approaching from different directions are required to merge within a constrained section, slowing down the overall movement and creating recurring choke points.

Traffic police has asked the PWD to redesign the merger instead of merely managing the congestion through enforcement and traffic regulation.

The traffic police’s intervention comes within days of the opening of the phase-III stretch, which was expected to improve connectivity between south Delhi and areas towards Mayur Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan, and reduce pressure on existing arterial roads.

Police said corrective engineering measures at the Sundial merger would be necessary to ensure that the additional capacity created by the new flyover translates into smoother traffic movement rather than shifting the congestion to the point where the new and existing corridors meet.