New Delhi, (Samajweekly) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday chaired a review meeting with PWD officials on the capital’s ongoing road redesigning project, and directed the officials to remove all obstacles under the project to redesign the 540 kms of identified roads.
“The process of designing the roads should be done in a swift manner and the project should be completed within the stipulated deadline,” he said.
The PWD officials said that the process of appointing a consultant for the redesigning of roads has been completed.
The consultant is responsible for preparing and submitting a Detailed Project Report (DPR) by February 2021, based on which the tenders will be given and the operations to design the 540 kms of roads will begin by June 2021.
The Chief Minister said that the DPR should be completed as soon as possible for rapid progress of the project, which needs to be completed in two years. The deadline for redesigning the entire 540 km stretch is early 2023.
PWD Minister Satyendar Jain, the PWD Secretary, the PWD Engineer-in-Chief and various other PWD officials were also present in the review meeting at the Delhi Secretariat.
The Delhi government is working to redesign the 100 feet wide and 540 km long roads of the national capital on the lines of European cities.
The development of these roads will be on the lines of the Built-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model and the construction company will take care of the maintenance for 15 years.
People of the city face issues due to bottleneck roads, which leads to traffic congestion at various locations. The wide roads in many parts of Delhi turn into a narrow road, and then back into a wide road after a few km, which creates a bottleneck situation and heavy traffic at particular locations.
The priority will be removing those bottlenecks first, for a smooth flow of traffic and an organised lane system. The second goal would be to increase the efficiency of the existing space of the roads in the city so that they are best utilised.
There will be measured and planned spaces for vehicles, non-motorised vehicles, footpaths, and side-lanes. The footpaths will be widely mapped to an average of 10 feet for the convenience of the pedestrians and redesigned and reconstructed as per a standard height for the convenience of the physically handicapped.
There will be separate spaces for the planting of trees on the sides of the footpaths.
The slope of the roads, as well as the drains, will be redesigned to tackle the problem of water-logging on the roads. Rainwater harvesting structures will be built inside the drainage systems to store it as groundwater.
Not even an inch of the surface of any road or roadside will be left uncovered, in order to ensure that there is no dust on the roads. Adequate grasses and shrubs will be planted on all surfaces to ensure dust control.
