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In view of the continuous traffic snarls, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has taken up the work of reducing the size of the traffic island at Dwarka. Heavy vehicular movement is witnessed throughout the day at the junction with vehicles plying between the city and Nashik Road railway station and further towards Pune. Apart from the city traffic, the stream of vehicles taking the up and down ramps is also constant.

For most part of the day, all the sides of the Dwarka junction are chock-a-block with vehicles. Motorists commuting through the Dwarka junction on a regular basis said that they had to wait for at least 15 to 20 minutes daily at the junction in the scorching sun. They also alleged that the traffic cops at the junction failed to gauge the number of vehicles that were stuck on a particular road and continued clearing traffic at their own pace.

Project director of NHAI, Prashant Khodaskar, said that the work will likely be over within three weeks. "The idea is to add one more lane on all the sides of the circle, measuring 3.5 metres, for free movement of vehicular traffic," he added.

Apart from reducing the size of the traffic island in the centre of the junction, the NHAI is also removing the traffic islands in front of the four ramps at the junction to ease traffic congestion. This is to increase the width of the main carriageway by two lanes and construct a 1.2-metre thick median to separate the main carriageway from the service road. Beside the median, the company will be leaving a lane exclusively for autorickshaws and taxies which operate from Dwarka Circle.

Traffic congestion has become a routine problem at the junction despite the four-lane elevated corridor, the six-lane main carriageway below it, the twin service roads and the subway for pedestrians.

Vehicles on the six-lane main carriage way and those descending or taking the ramps had to squeeze through the limited road between the four traffic islands. Officials said that after the size of the traffic island in Dwarka circle is reduced and the four traffic islands in front of the ramps are done away with, it would give more space to vehicles and the problem of traffic congestion would be solved.

Dwarka circle is one of the busiest junctions in the city where the Mumbai-Agra national highway intersects the Nashik-Pune highway. The volume of vehicles, including autoricshaws, taxies and buses plying between the Nashik Road railway station and Nashik city on the Bytco-Dwarka stretch of the Nashik-Pune highway, adds to the vehicle population that has to pass through Dwarka junction to enter and exit the city.

Source-On Request