Study to ease city’s traffic woes buried

Over 50 roads identified to reduce congestion on main roads

While commuters across the city are having a tough time beating city traffic everyday, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has been wasting precious time conducting studies. Unsurprisingly, most of them have not yielded any results in the recent past.

Though LEA Associates have conducted a survey and identified slip roads which connect bylanes with arterial roads, the Corporation has now decided put the project in cold storage and embark on a new survey.

LEA Associates identified over 50 slip roads, short roads from which vehicles join or leave a main road. However, immediately after the recent review meeting held by the municipal administration and urban development minister K.T. Rama Rao, corporation officials claimed that the slip road project requires the survey afresh.

Highly placed sources in the corporation said that the civic body has already paid whopping amounts to the private agency for conducting the survey. None of them were in the mood to disclose the amount paid to the agency. Sources said that the fund-crunched corporation was only wasting time in the name of surveys and several studies. The Kirloskar Committee report on nala-widening, for example, was also put in cold storage.

A senior GHMC official, on condition of anonymity, said that corporation would now conduct a fresh survey with a different agency, dropping LEA Associates. He said that the new study would be executed in the western part of the city on an experimental basis and based on the results, will be conducted in the remaining parts of the city. The official said that the corporation will hire a consultant and ask the agency to identify slip roads which require minimal land acquisition. He said that consultant will embark on the study from November.

Previously, the corporation decided to improve stretches, including Kachiguda Main Road to New Golconda bridge, Ali Cafe junction to Nagole via Ahmed Nagar colony, Greenlands Junction to Necklace road, Link Road connecting to Madhapur, IALA road (behind Westin hotel), Botanical Garden Road to Hafeezpet railway track, JV Hills, Kondapur X Roads, Raghavendra Colony, passing through HT line, Madhapur main road to Knowledge Park via Raheja IT park, TCS to ORR service road via Janachaitanya road (Nanakramguda), NHDC Financial District Layout to Narsing (Nanakramguda service road, ORR), Madhapur to Hitec city, Narsing village to Hand of Hope church (Nanakramguda), Chandanagar Main Road to Sridevi theatre over

nala, end of phase IX to IDPL society, Kukatpally main road to Anjaneya

Nagar and others.

The corporation would occupy as many as 204

properties in this regard.

However, this report will now gather dust.