Car-free CP plan fails to take off

NEW DELHI: Over a year after the government announced that Connaught Place would be made a car-free zone, the ambitious plan to decongest the heritage shopping arcade continues to remain only on paper.

Resistance from traders, inadequate parking facilities and lack of a foolproof traffic management plan are some reasons cited for non-implementation of the plan.

The then Urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu had in January last year announced that the middle and inner circles of Connaught Place were to be made no-vehicle zones for three months, on an experimental basis to decongest the area.

The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which was supposed to implement the plan, is non-committal about when will the plan take off. “There are lot of lacunae in the plan and detailed preparation is required to make such an area vehicle free which gets around 5 lakh visitors daily. We are on it but nothing can be committed as of now about when will the plan take off,” a senior NDMC official said.

The three-month trial for a carfree Connaught Place, which the NDMC had planned in February last year, was put off after opposition from traders.

Last August, the civic body decided to experiment the implementation of the plan on weekends. However, the New Delhi Traders Association had threatened to go on strike, saying Saturdays and Sundays were peak days of business for them.