NEW DELHI: Delhi's three prominent markets and commercial office spaces — Connaught Place, Nehru Place and Bhikaji Cama Place — could get a “parking facelift” as part of a Parliamentary High Powered Committee’s plan to decongest the National Capital and ensure smooth traffic flow.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based ‘Intelligent Traffic Management System’ (ITMS) that Delhi Police has been working on since 2010 will get a push. The long-pending proposal for a ‘Delhi Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority’ (DUMTA), to synchronise the efforts of all land-owning and traffic rules enforcing agencies, could also finally see the light of the day.
P Chidambaram, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs, recently took a meeting of senior officers of the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi, Delhi Development Authority, Delhi Transport Department, Delhi Traffic Police, UTIPEC and DMRC on de-clogging the city.
They presented a 60-page report for a three-year-long plan on how Delhi’s arterial roads and important by lanes can be made smoother and faster to navigate.
Deputy Commissioner with the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), Prem Shankar Jha, who has worked on the plan, said, “The Parliamentary Committee had taken note of Delhi’s worsening traffic condition, media reports on increasing vehicular pollution fouling the city air and in general complaints by Members of Parliament (MPs) on how even evacuating VIPs during emergencies is a problem.”
“We have worked on various aspects of decongesting Delhi. For example, there would be an improvement in road geometry, creation of pedestrian walkways, zebra crossings will be made more visible, footpaths put on the same level for the disabled, prominent no-parking boards erected, among others,” he explained.
Delhi has more than 10 million registered vehicles, out of which nearly 6.8 million are two-wheelers. The Centre had previously come up with a detailed decongestion plan for Delhi in 2016, but it remained in abeyance.