Jaipur-Delhi lane of Hero Honda Chowk flyover to shut for 45 days

GURUGRAM: Commuters will soon have to brace for traffic congestion at Hero Honda Chowk as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is going to close the Jaipur-Delhi side of the flyover across the busy intersection for a month and a half to carry out urgent repairs.
Officials said the NHAI has asked the Gurugram police to divert traffic to the service lanes of the highway to facilitate the repair work that is to begin in a couple of weeks. Traffic cops, on their part, have asked the highways authority to widen the service lane from Hero Honda Chowk towards Khandsa and install a traffic signal at the junction.
The 1.4km long flyover was damaged on May 8 after a chunk of concrete fell off for the second time in 13 months and a hole emerged in the surface of the road. In April last year too, chunks of concrete fell off the flyover.
The latest move to impose blanket ban on movement of vehicles comes after a three-member technical committee of NHAI suggested immediate repair work to prevent further damage to the affected portion. “The Delhi-Jaipur side of the carriageway will, however, remain open,” said an NHAI official.
The committee — constituted to recommend measures to permanently fix the carriageway — has had about six sittings. At its last meeting on July 28, it asked a private laboratory, which is analyzing the concrete samples, and contractor Valecha Engineering, which built the flyover at Rs 200 crore, to submit their report within a week.
Sources told TOI the committee received the report and “is evaluating the sam.e to come up with remedial measures which will act as guidelines for NHAI while executing the repair work”. “As soon the directions come from the panel, we should be in a position to execute it at the earliest. Thus, we have started preparations,” the official added.
Traffic cops, however, have asked the NHAI to widen the service lane at Hero Honda Chowk and install a traffic signal at the junction. “We had a detailed discussion on how to manage the traffic flow in a way that both repair work and movement of vehicles can go on simultaneously.
As of now, the service lane where the traffic is proposed to be diverted is two-lane. We’ve asked the NHAI to widen the lanes to accommodate more vehicles,” said DCP (traffic) Himanshu Garg. NHAI has already begun the road widening work and is expected to conclude it soon, officials said.