Govt to soon come with new plan to decongest Delhi: Naidu

The government will soon come up with a new urban plan to decongest Delhi, which includes expansion of metro rail, introduction of circular railway around the capital city and revival of the BRT corridor, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said today.
"The government is coming up with a new plan to decongest Delhi. The matter is under consideration, and we will make it public in a few days time.
"Besides, we are also planning to expand our metro railway network in Haryana. Ideas of introducing circular railway around the capital city, and totally reviving the BRT corridor are also under consideration," Naidu told reporters.

The Urban Development Minister was speaking on the sidelines, after inaugurating an over 1-km long underpass, which would reduce the distance between Okhla and Noida's Kalindi Kunj by nearly 8 km and the travel time by 30 minutes.
The Urban Development Minister said that efforts are also on to properly rehabilitate the "jhuggi-jhopri dwellers" with "pucca houses" as per our Prime Minister's vision.
"Regularisation of unauthorised colonies is also under consideration...As for other urban projects, the urban development, railway and environment ministries are in talks to come up with policy for better Delhi, which is a mini India," he said.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) said, the 1090 m-long underpass consists of 533m of open area and 557 m of covered area.

"It has six lanes, three on each side of the carriageway. In the covered area, railway has constructed 177m. The total height is 5.5 m, and it also has two clover-leaves, which have a total length of 590 m and width of 7.5 m. One clover-leaf connects Ashram to Okhla whereas the other connects Okhla to Badarpur," a senior official of the DDA said.
"2500 m-long cycle tracks and 2600m-long footpath is under construction and is likely to be completed by February 2015," the official said.

Conceived in 2008, the underpass was originally scheduled to be completed by 2010, and DDA as ascribed the delay to "revision of the concept plan" by the UTTIPEC (Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Planning and Engineering Centre), the planning body of the DDA.
"The other reason for delay was that the area was a maximum service lines-area and so we had to move water pipeline of DJB, electricity lines, gas pipelines, alongside shifting of trees," the official added.
She said that the railway has used the new "box-push technology" to make the facility, which meant that the traffic above it was left undisturbed during the civil work.

Members of Parliament Mahesh Giri and Ramesh Bidhuri were also present on the occasion.