Dug-up Aurobindo Marg takes the road to revival

Friday, Dec 10, 2010




Gridlocked traffic on roads that caved in every now and then. The dreaded Yusuf Sarai market bottleneck. No space to park. Patients and their kin dangerously darting across the road in front of AIIMS. One thought Aurobindo Marg would never emerge out of that nightmare. But quietly, two months after this restored stretch was opened to traffic, it seems things could not have been better. If you want to guage the mood, go to Yusuf Sarai market where the smiles are back.

``Life is finally back to normal,'' says restaurateur Rajkumar Sharma. ``When we first heard Metro was coming, we were overjoyed. But then the work started and our misery began piling up. There was a time when we thought that our businesses would have to be closed down,'' he remembers. Sharma is president of the Yusuf Sarai Market Association. Recalls Parmeshwar Khanna, a local business woman who runs a grocery store in a lane next to the Green Park gurdwara: ``The businesses along the main road were the most affected. In fact, earnings came down by 50%, and while no one closed shop, there was tremendous hardship.''

The residents were not faring any better. ``We bore the brunt of the construction work. My children had to go to lanes inside Green Park to catch the school bus, as the buses could't stop on the congested main road,'' remembers Sharma. But that's also over. While Sharma says business is getting back on its feet, the residents on both side of the road are very happy. Mahua Chatterjee, a school teacher who stays in Hauz Khas apartments, exults: ``The main road is now much wider and the traffic is smooth with few jams happening even during peak office hours. Getting to Ring Road is a breeze nowadays.

Streetscaping, a service lane and better traffic management have all contributed to bring about this transformation. Admits Jitender Tyagi, chief project manager of the Gurgaon Metro line, ``The Green Park metro station was, I feel, the toughest construction project in Phase II that I have undertaken.'' Shops encroaching on the arterial road, congestion as lack of parking meant that cars were parked along the main road and the presence of utilities like water and sewer lines had turned the Green Park station into an engineering challenge, say Metro officials.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was the presence of a brick barrell drain bang in the middle of the Metro track. Says a DMRC official, ``The drain was clogged. As a result, during monsoon, water started flooding the tunnel we had built for the line.'' This led to cave-ins and jams. At one point, Aurobindo Marg was closed for almost a month. There was no solution in sight.

``One of our officers then came across the CPWD engineer who had been part of the team that built the drain in 1962-63. He still remembered the design and told us the drain had weep-holes which had got clogged.'' That proved to be the key. The restored road now follows UTTIPEC ( United Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure, Plg and Engg, Centre) guidelines with the main carriageway measuring 10.5m and service lanes on both sides of 4.5m width. The service lane is a first and serves as an alternate parking area where earlier the only option was the main road.

A pathway of 1.5m has also been built between the service lane and the main carriageway for pedestrians. Streetscaping has been done with emphasis on greenery. Pre-cast coloured tiles have been fixed on the pathway even as traffic movement has been eased with the closure of some bylanes like the one next to the Uphaar complex.

Original news source http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Dug-up-Aurobindo-Marg-takes-the-road-to-revival/articleshow/7074282.cms#ixzz17gQu01wB