Northern access road barely used, IGI traffic continues to choke NH-8

Tuesday, Nov 16, 2010



A few hurriedly put up signages - some on sheets of paper - at the start of the northern access road by the traffic police were the only indicators of the new road that promised to make driving to IGI Airport's terminal 3 a cakewalk. While it does ensure a smooth ride, it is evident that barely one car passes through the new tunnel road every 15 minutes.

Monday, which saw a major jump in the traffic volume as compared to Sunday, saw NH-8 choked with slowmoving traffic for most part of the day. The evening was specially chaotic with both airport traffic and that moving towards Gurgaon concentrated on the same stretch.

'' With only one carriageway of the Northern Access Road open so far, traffic exiting the airport has to perforce use NH-8 . On the other hand, while it can make things easier when one is driving towards the airport, nobody seems to know about the road. One naturally takes the diversion to the international terminal from the airport flyover not knowing that the access road is in fact approachable only from the domestic airport side. There are no signs on the main road to indicate that,'' said an airport official.

The opening of the other carriageway , which officials claimed will be operational by the middle of the week, is likely to be delayed further as a lot of work still remains to be carried out.

Meanwhile, those using domestic terminal 1D were left at the mercy of a long crumbling road where the only saving grace was the absence of a substantial part of daily traffic. '' While driving up to the airport was never really a problem, for the past several months we have had to drive up to Thimayya Road, take a u-turn at the crossing and drive back along the Dwarka underpass to NH-8 . The road that connected the domestic terminal with NH-8 has been closed due to some construction work or the other , and the alternate route is not only longer but also in a very bad shape,'' said DP Tomar, who was returning from the airport.

An airport employee, who uses the road regularly, said that the Uturn specially was a problem area. '' The road leading up to the traffic light is used almost exclusively by people leaving the airport. However, at the light more traffic from Delhi Cantt joins in and the U-turn is really narrow and in an extremely poor condition. From that point up till NH-8 , the road is normally always choked,'' he said.

Original news source http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Northern-access-road-barely-used-IGI-traffic-continues-to-choke-NH-8/articleshow/6933399.cms#ixzz15ccGPocP