DEDICATED BUS BAYS SEPARATED BY DIVIDERS TO KEEP TRAFFIC ON TRACK

VIP Road is aiming to reclaim from Rajarhat Expressway its reputation as the fastest route to the airport.

Two extra lanes are being added to the thoroughfare on either flank from Ultadanga till the airport as part of a plan to have dedicated bus bays both ways, leaving the rest of the road space for other vehicles.

The Rs 54-crore project to add the extra lanes on the east and west-bound flanks will turn VIP Road from a six-lane corridor to a 10-lane one and uniform in width along almost the entire 8km stretch between Ultadanga and Airport Gate No. 1.

A PWD engineer said work was nearing completion between Haldiram's and the airport. "We are currently widening two stretches: Ultadanga-Kestopur and Raghunathpur- Haldiram's."

Four additional lanes, two in each flank, translate into six metres of additional road space on each of the flanks. The standard measure for thoroughfares is that one lane should have enough space for a medium to large vehicle to pass without any difficulty.

Snarls are common on several stretches of VIP Road, more so with neighbourhoods on either side growing exponentially over the years. The new VIP Road flyover has unclogged the notorious traffic bottlenecks at Kestopur, Baguiati and Joramandir, but the Lake Town, Bangur and Kaikhali crossings remain problem points.

The fear of being left stranded by a snarl at some point still makes many airport-bound passengers either start well ahead of time or take the much longer Rajarhat Expressway.

A car invariably takes less time to reach the airport through the expressway, although this entails travelling at least six extra kilometres. "I leave for the airport at least with an additional hour in hand because of the sudden traffic snarls on VIP Road. There have been occasions when I have come close to missing flights," said businessman Rajesh Gidwani, a resident of Chowringhee.

So, would widening VIP Road eliminate the bottlenecks that still exist?

"Each flank of the VIP Road flyover has two lanes. Just below the flyover, the road is a three-lane one on either flank, which means traffic is moving simultaneously along five lanes at a time on one flank. But once the flyover stretch ends, we are back to three lanes and that becomes a bottleneck. By adding two extra lanes on either flank, we are trying to eliminate this problem," an engineer explained.

In the proposed layout, two lanes to the left of both flanks will be reserved for buses, potentially ending the problem of bus drivers braking in the middle of the thoroughfare to pick up passengers and throwing traffic haywire.

The lanes will have dividers to restrict buses to their bay, the engineer said. "If we are able to leave the rest of the road to other vehicles, cars don't have to wait and honk from behind buses."

IT entrepreneur Kalyan Kar, who is the vice-president of the Sector V Stakeholders' Association, said the move to create separate lanes for buses could make VIP Road the best option for a drive to and from the airport. "I welcome it. This will make the ride smoother and save about five or six minutes in travel time between Ultadanga and the airport."

The only hitch is that land isn't available yet in some places. Near the Kaikhali crossing, extra lanes can't be added to one flank because of privately owned land starting from the edge of the thoroughfare, officials said.

The project, which started last year, is apparently targeted for completion in another three months. But PWD officials were wary of specifying a deadline. "There are some underground electric cables from Raghunathpur till Haldiram's. Till these are shifted, we cannot begin work there," an engineer said.

The project includes subways at Raghunathpur, Bangur and Kaikhali, besides a concrete walkway along the Kestopur canal that separates Salt Lake from VIP Road.

Around 100 trees have been felled to widen the once leafy VIP Road, something that officials said couldn't be avoided. "We will plant five times more trees than those that had to be cut down. A plantation programme is part of the project," the engineer said.