In important remarks that explain rampant delays in government efforts to decongest the Delhi-Gurugram traffic lanes, Road Transport Secretary V Umashankar on Friday said environmental and forest clearance issues were at the heart of the challenge.Answering a Tribune query on why the Union government that’s building major expressways around the country was finding it hard to ease traffic between two major cities of Delhi and Gurugram, Umashankar said a part of the alternative plan traverses through the ecologically fragile Aravallis and that’s a sensitive issue.”Essentially, the funnelling of the traffic through a single road is the real problem behind congestion on the Delhi-Gurugram road.
This is compounded by the rapid growth in the neighbourhood of Delhi. The opening of the Dwarka Expressway has not mitigated the problem,” Umashankar said at a special briefing Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan held on the completion of the 50th review meeting of PRAGATI platform by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week.
Somanathan was accompanied in the briefing by top ministry bureaucrats, including secretaries for road transport and highways, power, department of industrial policy, information and broadcasting and Railway Board chairman.
Citing a solution to the congestion on Delhi-Gurugram route which can take up to three hours one side in peak rush hours, Umashankar said “We will have to look at a third axis apart from the current single road between Delhi and Gurugram and the Dwarka Expressway.
The only part of that problem is that it will travel through the Aravallis. So there is a degree of environmental sensitivity involved,” he said, explaining the delays in the project.
The road transport secretary added that the origin of the problem was the funneling of the entire traffic that is flowing South into one road.
Road transport ministry has contributed the highest to the number of projects PM Modi has personally reviewed under PRAGATI plan which was launched in 2015 to speed up stalled infrastructure plans.
Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI), a digital platform for monitoring government projects and redressing public grievances, has so far reviewed over 3,300 infrastructure related projects with PM, reviewing 382 of these personally, 114 among these 382 pertaining to the Road ministry.