Gurugram: Barriers at illegal cuts & turns soon to avert snarls

GURUGRAM: The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) is planning to barricade all illegal cuts and turns on roads in the city to streamline the flow of traffic as well as prevent accidents.
DCP (Traffic) Ravinder Singh Tomar raised the issue during a traffic meeting last month, said a senior GMDA official.
Tomar told TOI, “Apart from the passages already created as per the city design by the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), people have opened several cuts and turns on the main carriageway of roads across the city, creating traffic congestion. During the meeting, we requested that only dedicated cuts in the master plan remain open,” the DCP said.
At the meeting, the DCP noted that the traffic department has already submitted a list of places where such “unauthorised passages” exist and apprised relevant officials in both GMDA and the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) about those.
While GMDA handles all the master roads in the city, the internal roads fall under the jurisdiction of the MCG.
The GMDA official said that after the meeting, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sudhir Rajpal directed the temporary closure of the “unauthorised passages” using barricades.
The DCP (traffic) and GMDA officials confirmed that either the GMDA or the MCG would execute that work based on who has jurisdiction over a stretch.
“The CEO directed that only passages designed according to the master plan stay open. He also directed the station house officers of police stations in the city to coordinate with the resident welfare associations in their respective jurisdictions to achieve this,” said the GMDA official.
Residents of the city, meanwhile, welcomed the focus on regulating traffic movement.
“Violations like wrong side driving or opening of illegal turns are a menace across Gurugram and largely go unchecked, so it is a relief to know that authorities are finally focusing on this.
However, completely stopping the practice would require constant vigilance and penalising the violators. Those are the only ways that such practices would stop permanently.
Otherwise, commuters will open the closed cuts sooner or later,” said Saurabh Gupta, a resident of DLF 1.