New Delhi:
Two major elevated road corridors proposed nearly a decade ago by the Public Works Department (PWD) to ease traffic across Delhi are set to be shelved due to changed urban dynamics, soaring costs, and the emergence of alternative infrastructure, officials aware of the matter said on Thursday.
The projects – a north-south corridor linking west Delhi to the Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) and an east-west corridor connecting Anand Vihar to Peeragarhi – have remained stalled at the proposal stage since around 2015. Officials cited prolonged delays in statutory approvals, significant cost escalations, and the completion of other expressway projects that have altered traffic patterns and reduced the feasibility of the original plans.
The “North–South Corridor” was conceived as an elevated road to decongest west Delhi and provide direct access to UER-II. This was planned to pass through densely populated areas including Kirti Nagar, Keshopur, and Vikas Puri. It required extensive land acquisition and utility relocation.
“This corridor was planned when UER-II was still under development and traffic projections were very different,” a senior PWD official, who asked not to be identified, explained. “Multiple flyovers, grade separators, and arterial road improvements have since come up. The cost-benefit equation of building another elevated corridor through built-up areas no longer appears viable.”
The East-West Corridor, on the other hand, proposed a 20-km elevated road to create seamless connectivity from Anand Vihar in east Delhi to Peeragarhi in the west, broadly running along a railway line. Its alignment was complex, starting near Nizamuddin Bridge and passing through ITO, New Delhi Railway Station, Ajmeri Gate, and Old Rohtak Road before terminating at Peeragarhi.
One of the officials cited above noted the project faced intricate engineering challenges and required land acquisition in some of Delhi’s most congested zones. “It never moved beyond conceptual and preliminary planning. Approvals from railways, environmental bodies, and other agencies were pending, while construction costs escalated sharply,” another official said.
Officials indicated that the very premise of large elevated corridors within the city has been reconsidered. Such projects involve high capital expenditure, long construction timelines, and significant disruption in dense urban areas. Instead, authorities have prioritized targeted interventions – flyovers, underpasses, signal-free junctions – and peripheral expressways like the Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways, which divert through-traffic away from the city core.
“The urban context has changed significantly in the last decade. With UER-II operational and multiple corridor improvements inside the city, traffic patterns are different from what was projected when these proposals were first made,” an official noted.
According to officials, neither project has been formally scrapped yet, but both are unlikely to be taken forward in their current form. PWD, the officials said, is now focusing on completing ongoing works and taking up localised projects aimed at specific bottlenecks: grade separators at key junctions, improvements to radial and ring roads, and better integration of road infrastructure with metro and bus systems.