Barapullah Phase 3 traffic congestion returned on Monday, creating long queues across one of Delhi’s recently opened urban links and forcing vehicles towards the NH-9 and DND routes. Delhi Traffic Police deployed personnel at affected points, but commuters continued to face delays through the morning.
The disruption was reported after the corridor’s opening and became particularly visible on the first working day after the holidays. Traffic was also affected on connected routes, including the existing Barapullah corridor, Ring Road, Delhi-Noida Link Road and the DND corridor. Some motorists were reported to be travelling on the wrong side of the road to escape the queues.
According to Delhi Traffic Police, the main cause is a structural bottleneck at the old Barapullah flyover. Traffic arriving from several directions is merging at one point, where around eight to nine lanes of vehicles are being compressed into a three-lane section of the older flyover.
The existing Barapullah flyover, covering phases 1 and 2, has three lanes. The newly opened Phase 3 flyover towards Mayur Vihar has approximately three lanes. The Sarai Kale Khan-side loop and the DND-side loop are also three lanes wide. Together, these approaches bring substantial traffic towards the narrower section of the old flyover, resulting in long vehicle queues.
The traffic police also said that Google Maps was not showing live traffic-flow updates for the affected route. As a result, the corridor continued to appear green, or free of congestion, on the navigation platform even while traffic was building on the ground. Police personnel were positioned at both merging points to regulate vehicle movement.
Barapullah Phase 3 was inaugurated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on September 29. The project was built at a reported cost of ₹1,635 crore. It was approved in 2014, construction began in 2015 and the original completion deadline was 2017, but the project faced repeated delays before opening.
The immediate traffic management response is focused on police deployment at the two merging points. The Delhi Traffic Police’s identification of the old flyover as the structural bottleneck places the capacity mismatch between the new approaches and the existing three-lane section at the centre of the current disruption.
