Connaught Place to go vehicle-free for 3 months
The middle and inner circular roads of Connaught Place (CP) will be vehicle-free from February for three months, as an experiment for decongesting the area.
The decision was taken at a meeting attended by officials from the urban development ministry, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and Delhi Police. It was chaired by Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu.
“It was decided that pedestrian is at ion of Connaught Place will be implemented for ground testing of issues related to changes in traffic circulation, experience of pedestrians and shop owners, management of reclaimed parking lots, traffic load on outer circle ,etc,” an official release said.
The officials said walking could be promoted by declaring the middle and inner circular roads vehicle-free, by providing effective ‘park and ride’ services from major parking areas at Shivaji Stadium, Baba Kharak Singh Marg and Palika parking.
Total parking capacity at these three locations is 3,172 vehicles, and on an average, only 1,088 vehicles are parked, they said. Beside, cycle hiring, battery-operated vehicles will take people to the business district.
Naidu also reviewed the implementation of smart city plan of the NDMC, whose chairman Naresh Kumar, said the results on ground could be seen in the next four to five months.
Other issues discussed included landscaping, development of water bodies to act as humidifier in the walking zone, light and sound shows, side walk cafes, public plazas and organising street festivals. Naidu emphasised that congestion-free, accidentfree and crime-free experience of visitors shall be the objective of ‘pedestrianisation’.
Kumar informed the meeting that work on strengthening of a smart energy grid network would begin next month, while work on automatic metering and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) in March this year.
According to a release, three of the 11 decentralised sewage treatment plans would be completed by the end of this month while the remaining by June.