India

Delhi Traffic Police Request PWD Redesign Barapullah Phase‑III Flyover Merge Point

By Hemani Bhandari

The Delhi Traffic Police have written to the Public Works Department (PWD) asking for a redesign of the merger point where the newly opened Barapullah Phase‑III Flyover joins the existing corridor near Sundial Park. The flyover opened to the public on Wednesday, and by Thursday evening the eight‑kilometre stretch from Safdarjung Hospital to Sarai Kale Khan was taking over an hour to travel. A drone survey by the traffic police found two three‑lane roads feeding into a single three‑lane corridor at several points, with a lane ending abruptly where the new spur joins the existing flyover over Sundial Park.

In a letter dated 1 October, the office of the deputy police commissioner (southern range) highlighted major geometric and structural defects to the executive engineer of PWD’s flyover project division F‑21. The letter noted that a joint inspection of the flyover and its adjoining stretches was conducted on 1 October by senior traffic police officers and PWD officials. The inspection identified geometric and traffic‑flow issues at the merger point near Sundial Park that are contributing to significant congestion, especially given the high volume on the new corridor.

The letter described the merger point as having a sharp or rectangular geometry instead of a smooth curvature, causing an abrupt merging of traffic and creating a bottleneck. An aerial photo taken by a drone was attached to illustrate the defect. It also cited a severe mismatch in lane capacities: the new Phase‑III Flyover has three lanes, while three lanes of traffic from the Sundial side (coming from Sarai Kale Khan/Ring Road) merge at the same location, and another three lanes from the Ashram/DND side also merge toward the existing Barapullah corridor. The existing Barapullah Flyover has only two lanes at the relevant stretch, resulting in a substantial mismatch in lane capacity and congestion.

The traffic police requested that PWD engineers make prompt modifications to ease commuter distress and ensure road safety, suggesting that the merger at Sundial be redesigned with a smooth curvature instead of the current rectangular geometry to facilitate safer merging of traffic.