Gurgaon traffic woes ease, part of Hero Honda flyover opens

GURGAON: In a major relief to those heading from Manesar to New Delhi, the one-side carriageway of the eight-lane Hero Honda Chowk flyover was opened on Monday.

It will help commuters save travel time by bypassing an intersection that witnesses heavy traffic from Jaipur, Pataudi, Manesar and other parts of northern Gurgaon.

Officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) claim more than three lakh vehicles ply on the ManesarNew Delhi route every day so the flyover was opened after only two days of trial runs.

For Dr Harshavardhan Hegde, an orthopedician with Rockland Hospital at its facility in Manesar and Qutub Institutional Area, New Delhi, the flyover’s opening will save 20-30 minutes of travel time between the two facilities located 40 km apart.

“I complete the 40 km journey between the Manesar and the facility at Qutub Institutional Area under two hours, with Hero Honda Chowk being the major bottleneck. I am anticipating that my travel will cut down by half-an-hour,” he said.

Work on the project began in February 2015 with a deadline of May 27, 2017. It is unlikely that the flyover will meet this deadline owing to a restaurant and petrol pump coming in the way of construction on the opposite side of the flyover (from New Delhi to Manesar).

However, officials said with the opening of one-side carriageway the diversion road for traffic from Manesar to New Delhi has been barricaded to create space for accelerating construction work and completing the project by June.

“The flyover’s opening has been done to create a diversion. Traffic from Manesar to New Delhi will be diverted to that route. The official inauguration of the stretch will only happen after the entire project is completed on June 30,” Ashok Sharma, project engineer of NHAI said.