Thousands of Millennium City r esidents along the under-construction Dwarka Expressway or working at Industrial Model Township, Manesar need to pay a hefty toll and spend a long time waiting at the Kherki Daula toll plaza on their way to work and back home everyday. Almost 20 lakh vehicles use the toll every month. Due to lack of proper management and a large volume of traffic, long snarls are a common sight at the toll, especially during the rush hours.
The removal of Kherki Daula toll plaza on Delhi-Gurugram Expressway has, therefore, been a long-pending demand of the locals, but it remains unmet despite the government agreeing to it in principle.
While Manesar Industries Welfare Association has been seeking its removal saying that it is a hindrance to the economic development of the IMT, Manesar, the residents along the Dwarka Expressway say it adds to the already high levels of pollution in the area.
Earlier, the government had planned to shift it to Sehrawan village, but the plan was dropped after objections from the National Green Tribunal.
Another site chosen at Panchgaon also invited legal troubles due to objections from the environmentalists and the matter is pending in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
NHAI project director Ashok Sharma said they were committed to shift the toll in three months’ time as announced by Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari in 2017, only if the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) provided them the promised 38 acre land at the site encumbrance-free.
Dwarka Expressway
Running nine years behind schedule, the 27-km-long Dwarka Expressway, envisaged to improve connectivity between Dwarka and Gurugram and reduce traffic on NH-48, remains a doomed project.
Caught in long-drawn legal battles, the project, announced in 2007, has missed several deadlines and no new deadline has been fixed for its completion. More than 106 projects, including commercial, are to come up along the expressway offering more than 90,000 residential units with an investment of ₹50,000 crore as per estimates. Already 50,000 residents in 50-odd group housing societies have shifted to their flats, but the completion of the highway remains a distant dream.
A portion of the road has been constructed but it is not connected to NH-48 and Delhi. The stretch is in bad shape and there are no street lights.
The alignment of the road, passing through the residential area, had led to court cases delaying the project. In 2016, the BJP government announced National Highway status to the road, also known as Northern Peripheral Expressway, to expedite its completion.
The lack of coordination between the Haryana and Delhi State governments also delayed it further.
Though the work for three of the four packages has started and expected to be completed in two years’ time, the package one work is yet to begin pending permission from the Delhi Forest Department.
The work for the proposed clover leaf to connect the NPE and the Southern Peripheral Expressway on NH-48 has been initiated but there is a dispute over a plot of land.
Transfer of licenced colonies
The infrastructure and its upkeep has always been a major issue in the licenced colonies and the demands were repeatedly raised for the transfer of the services to the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram.
I n view of the long-pending demand, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had in February 2016 announced that the maintenance and upkeep of roads, open spaces, public parks and public health services in around half-a-dozen licenced colonies would be transferred to the municipal corporation on ‘as is where is basis’, but more than three years later, the process is still in the pipeline for DLF Phase- I, II and III. Though the services for Sushant Lok-I, Palam Vihar and South City- I and II have been taken over earlier this year after the RWAs pursued the matter for years with the government, the residents are not satisfied with the quality of the service and the complaint redress mechanism. Though the developer is supposed to transfer these services to the municipal corporation five years after the date of issue of completion certificate, but since the grant of completion certificate in these colonies was pending due to non-completion of community and commercial sites, the transfer was allowed subject to the condition that the developers finish the remaining work in compliance of terms and conditions of the licence. It proved to be a major stumbling block in the transfer of colonies and caused the delay. Finally, the MCG agreed to carry out the completion work on its own and recover the cost from the builder through the Department of Town and Country Planning for Sushant Lok, South City- I and II and Palam Vihar. The DLF Universal Limited, however, took it upon itself to complete the pending work. The MCG House recently adopted a resolution for transfer of four more licenced colonies to the municipal corporation.
Though Haryana Roadways had started city bus service for Gurugram in 2012, it was marked by poor route selection, absence of online information mechanism for the commuters on the routes and timings and low frequency. Having missed several deadlines, the Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Limited finally launched a bus service for the city on September 2, 2018, with 25 non-AC low floor buses on a single route. Though it was earlier decided to launch a fleet of 1,000 buses, the number was then revised to 200 buses in the first phase till March, 2019. But only 114 buses ply on 12 routes under the service as of today.
Associate director Nagarro Sarika Panda Bhatt, an urban planning expert, said as per the Ministry of Urban Development guidelines, there should be 1,200 buses for the city going by the 2011 census, though the population had increased substantially since then. She said that city bus service and walkability should be the focus and not the underpasses and flyovers. Those travelling by city buses complain that the service is unreliable, inconvenient and frequency is low. The present service, therefore, is nowhere close to the need for a robust, convenient bus service for city with high frequency.
No wonder the local population is still largely dependent on personal vehicles, autorickshaws, e-rickshaws and cabs, le ading to congested roads, high levels of pollution, accidents and frequent traffic jams. More than 30,000 autorickshaws, including shared and personal, are the backbone of the city’s transport system.
Metro expansion
In contrast, the metro has vastly expanded in Delhi and also entered Bahadurgarh and Faridabad in Haryana over these years. In fact, a lot of time was lost in exploring different routes to connect the Yellow Line to Blue Line in Dwarka passing through Old City, but all routes were eventually rejected as not being financially viable.
Finally, a route was cleared extending Yellow Line to Old railway station passing through Hero Honda Chowk and a feasibility report was prepared by the DMRC in 2017. But the tender for the work is yet to be floated and it is only after the Assembly elections next month that some progress could be seen on the ground.
Similarly, Mr. Khattar’s assertion to connect Gurugram and Faridabad remains a hollow promise with nothing on the ground so far. The demand to connect Gurugram with Manesar and Rewari too is a distant dream.
Though Rapid Metro, the first fully privately funded metro project of the country, expanded along the Golf Course Road in 2017, it ran into financial troubles in less than six years after it began co mmercial operation on November 14, 2013. The project is now likely to be taken over by the DMRC.
