The half flyover at Savitri Cinema on Outer Ring Road came up around 1999. It was part of a larger project to make Outer Ring Road signal-free. That is yet to be achieved, but the spot has become a nightmare, especially during peak traffic hours.Over the years, traffic has grown. Traffic Police officials say that more than 10 lakh vehicles pass through this stretch daily. As this huge stream from the four-lane Chirag Dilli flyover gushes towards this half flyover, the width of the road gets reduced to virtually three lanes because of a gas cylinder depot jutting out into the road. That creates a knot which takes time to unravel and knocks out traffic over a long distance.As the vehicles slowly emerge from this bottleneck, there are barely two lanes each available for the straight moving (headed for Nehru Place) and right-turning (going towards GK-II) traffic. Since the volume of vehicles going towards Nehru Place is quite huge, it effectively means four lanes of vehicles being squeezed into two lanes.Public Works Department has never tired of saying that a half flyover is a technically sound idea for T-points, which is what the Savitri crossing was. However, to implement such a project, a realistic estimate of traffic flows and sufficient road width are needed.

“We feel it has worked well and the problems are a result of traffic mismanagement,“ said a senior PWD official.Traffic Police and road users don’t agree at all. When the traffic going towards Nehru Place piles up, it often blocks the way for the right turning traffic, creating a cascading effect. Adding to the chaos now is the work being carried out by Delhi Metro right next to the flyover.On the other carriageway which gives access to the half flyover to traffic going towards Chirag Dilli, the road next to the flyover ends in a compulsory left turn towards GK-II. “ At the start of the flyover near Chittaranjan Park, there is very little convergence space for vehicles. As traffic descends, the road curves sharply towards the Chirag Delhi flyover which results in slowing down of traffic,“ said a traffic official. A divider constructed on the last lane of the carriageway for buses also forces vehicles to drift towards the right, leading to a bottleneck.“It take me more than 15 minutes to cross the 500-metre stretch between C R Park and Chirag Dill daily and it’s worse if a vehicle breaks down on the flyover,“ said Amrita Roy , who works in Gurgaon.The bad news is that there is little relief t in sight. “With a Metro station coming up in the area, additional road space will be . required to accommodate feeders like autos and e-rickshaws. Either the road will have to be widened or a parallel flyover construct ed,“ said a PWD official. “With land acquisition rates having gone up, it has now become cheaper constructing a flyover rather than acquiring land which will anyway be difficult. On the other side of the road, towards GK-II, there is not land available.“