A bridge of hope over the Yamuna

FINALLY! After a wait of 14 long years, residents of northeast Delhi feel the new bridge will pave the way for a better life and a scenic passage in Signature style

NEW DELHI : It is a hazy November evening. The sun is hanging low on the horizon, casting an orange-red glow on Signature Bridge, Delhi’s new landmark that looms majestically over the river Yamuna. Standing at the barricades that divide the bridge—which links north and northeast Delhi—and the approach road, Asha Pant is having an animated conversation with helmeted construction workers who are giving the final touches to the giant structure.

“So, is it finally going to open on Sunday?” she eagerly asks, looking at the head of the pylon of the bridge that rises high into the sky. “I think on Monday,” says a short, swarthy man.

Pant, a resident of Khajuri Khas in northeast Delhi, is happy with the answer— after all, a new bridge over the Yamuna is what she has been waiting for almost over a decade. The Signature Bridge means a lot to her—it will cover what she calls the ‘ growing gulf’ between her and her husband. “For the past many years, my husband has been leaving home at 7 in the morning and reaches at 10 pm, tired and grumpy, all because of traffic logjam on the nearby Wazirabad Bridge. He has been telling me when this new bridge opens, he can be home by 8 pm,” says Pant, whose hopes have risen and fallen in tandem with the pace of the work on the bridge, which will be inaugurated on Sunday and will open for the public on Monday.

There are thousands like her in north-east and east Delhi areas such as Khajuri Khas, Bhajanpura and Usmanpur, who have waited for the opening of the bridge as if their life depended on it. They say the growing traffic on the Wazirabad Bridge crippled their lives in ways the government and the rest of the city never understood.

“Hundreds of families, including many of my neighbours, left Khajuri Khas because of the never-ending jams on the Wazirabad Bridge; many school children walked to school because their buses got caught in jams for hours almost every day,” says Deepa Nainwal, also a resident of Khajuri Khas, who on the day we met her extended her evening walk to the bridge just to confirm if it is really ready to be inaugurated as she has been reading about it in the newspapers in the past few days. “My children never reach home from school before 4 pm. This bridge means a lot to me,” Nainwal says.

In fact, every evening, hundreds of people — men and women , young and old — can be seen walking all the way to the bridge, talking about how they can see the bridge from their roofs, and how it will give the benighted neighbourhood, known for crime and grime, a whole new branding.

“A lot of us have to go to the dispensary and hospitals in Timarpur across the river, 6 km away, but it takes us two hours. I know of many instances of seriously sick people getting stuck in jams for hours on the Wazirabad Bridge,” says Inderpal, 62. “Crossing the river has been a herculean task for over 10 years because of the jams; the bridge will better integrate our colonies with the people on the other side,” he says.“i wish we did not have to wait and suffer so much,” says Omveer, a retired policeman, in Khajuri Khas.

The wait has indeed been long. The plan for an alternative bridge next to the narrow, congested Wazirabad Bridge has been afoot since October 1991 when The National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC) sub- mitted a draft interim report recommending a six-lane, dual carriageway bridge. But nothing came of it.

In November 1997, a speeding school bus lost control on the Wazirabad Bridge and plunged into the river, killing 28 children. The accident led to a huge outcry and the plan for an alternative bridge once again gained momentum in 1998. There were field surveys, technical reports but the bridge remained a distant dream.

Finally, in 2004, The Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC) was awarded the contract to execute the bridge. The tenders and approvals took another four years and work began in 2010.

What makes the asymmetric Signature Bridge — which is uncannily simi- lar to cable-stayed Erasmusbrug bridge in Rotterdam in the Netherlands — unique is its 154-metre-high single pylon (twice the height of Qutab Minar), boasting a glass head with an observation platform; its single deck with eight lanes.

Not many know that the bridge has been the subject of study – in many cases part of college project – for about 2,000 engineering students from all over the country. The walls of the DTTDC site office in front of Tibetan Colony, a few hundred metres away, have framed photographs of the bridge at various stages of construction, and a documentation room with over 15,000 structural drawings of the bridge.

On Wednesday, as we travelled to the top of the pylon on a construction lift, what we saw was a Delhi engulfed in a haze. All we could see was Pusta Road, Outer Ring Road, Timarpur, Tibetan Colony, Gurdwara Majnu-ka-tilla, the vast expense of the protected forest, and the undulating path of the Yamuna.

“On a clear day, the view can extend all the way to central Delhi,” assured a DTTDC official, who accompanied us to the pylon head. But it offers a depressing sight too — of the Najafgarh drain discharging its sewage waters into Yamuna, spreading like a thick, black sheet of poison, darkening the river waters, relatively clean upstream of the Wazirabad Bridge.

“Bridges are not just a facility to cross the river; they can make or break cityscapes. This is indeed a beautiful bridge, which, as you enter Delhi, reminds you that Delhi is a city of river,” says Aditya Sharma, a writer, who drives daily to Delhi from Sonepat.“now that we have such a magnificent bridge, we should clean the river.”

Ratan J. Baltiboi, the Mumbai-based architect of the bridge, says it will be to Delhi what Golden Gate is to San Francisco and Brooklyn Bridge is to New York City. “This bridge is an engineering marvel, created as a destination where people can come and enjoy, with the bridge enhancing the beauty of the surrounding area, which is to be developed as a tourist spot,” he says.

Manish Sisodia, deputy chief minister, while inviting the people of Delhi to the inauguration ceremony, which will have a laser show, said, “When you take the lift to the top of the Signature Bridge, you will get the same feeling when going to the top of Eiffel Tower.”

Reacting to the deputy CM’S invitation, Krishnan Pal Singh Yadav, 60, a resident of Bhajanpura, says he has never been to Paris nor can he afford to visit the French capital to compare the experience. But he does wish to attend the opening ceremony. “For us, this is a bridge of hope, a bridge that will pave way for a better life, a safe and scenic passage across the river,” says Yadav.