NEW DELHI: Two important infrastructure projects — the ITO
Skywalk and the Rani Jhansi
flyover — will be dedicated to the people of Delhi next week. The grade separator on Rani Jhansi Road will be inaugurated at long last on October 16 and the branched walkway over ITO on October 15.
The grade separator
project, two decades in the making, has missed nine deadlines due to “technical glitches” and poor coordination among the agencies involved. The delay in completing the work has led to problems both for commuters, drivers and shop owners in the area. Aadesh Gupta, mayor of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, inspected the grade separator on Thursday and announced its inauguration on October 16 by Union urban development minister Hardeep Puri.
Construction began three years after the flyover was awarded in 2006 and was to have been finished ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Now that it is finally done, the six-lane, 1.8-km grade separator will connect St Stephen’s Hospital near the Tiz Hazari Courts complex with Filmstan Cinema and provide a link with the intersections for DCM Chowk, Baraf Khana, Subzi Mandi and Azad Market.
At ITO, PWD officials said the final work was being carried out before the skywalk’s opening for the public on October 15. The Rs 54-crore pedestrian bridge is 570 metres long and will ease the way for users along Mathura Road, Tilak Marg, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and Sikandra Road. The network has seven entry/exit points at different locations and is expected to be used by around 40,000 walkers every day.
Union minister Puri had said during the foundation-laying ceremony that the project would be completed in March, but with several glitches arising, the deadline got extended to June, then July and September and now the first users will walk across the white structure on October 15. The problems included moulding the high-grade steel into rings for the curvilinear frame of the overbridge.
The ITO Skywalk project was conceived of in 2003, but was finalised only in April 2016. After taking the necessary approval of the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning & Engineering) Centre and Delhi Urban Arts Commission, PWD had floated tenders and the construction started in November 2017.
Starting at the
Pragati Maidan metro station, the bridge network has three arms. While one of them will turn left and drop down to Pragati Maidan’s Gate Number 9, the second will lead to the ITO crossing. The third arm will go under the Delhi Metro tracks and allow pedestrians access to the Tilak Lane railway station.