Barapullah Phase-III traffic is being diverted in Delhi after the opening of the new flyover exposed a bottleneck where traffic from around eight to nine lanes converges into just three lanes on the older Barapullah stretch, triggering severe congestion towards central Delhi.
The Delhi Traffic Police said the Old Barapullah Flyover has three lanes, while the newly opened Phase-III flyover on the Mayur Vihar side, the Sarai Kale Khan loop and the DND loop each have around three lanes. The convergence of these routes at a single point is creating the structural constraint, the department said in a post on X.
Traffic personnel have been deployed at the merging points to regulate vehicle movement. Traffic coming from Barapullah Phase-III is being diverted towards NH-24 and the DND corridor as authorities attempt to reduce pressure on the older flyover.
The clarification followed a journalist’s post about a two-kilometre traffic jam from Mayur Vihar towards AIIMS. The post also claimed that an ambulance had been caught in the congestion, highlighting the operational consequences of a bottleneck on a route intended to improve east-west connectivity and movement towards central Delhi.
The traffic police also said Google Maps was not accurately reflecting the live traffic conditions and continued to show the affected stretch as green. That mismatch can complicate route decisions for motorists when traffic conditions change faster than digital navigation platforms update.
Barapullah Phase-III was expected to improve connectivity between Mayur Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan and ease traffic movement towards central Delhi. The congestion reported after its opening shows that capacity added on individual approach roads can still be constrained when several widened or new links feed into a narrower existing section.
The immediate response remains focused on traffic regulation and diversion rather than adding physical road capacity. Police deployment at the merging points is intended to manage vehicle flows, while the diversion towards NH-24 and DND is being used to reduce the volume reaching the three-lane Old Barapullah Flyover.
The congestion comes as the Centre has approved a ₹1,789.52-crore Intelligent Traffic Management System for Delhi Police. The system is scheduled to be implemented in three phases over 24 months, followed by five years of operation and maintenance, and will cover 42 traffic corridors.
According to the information cited in the police report, the system will include 1,092 Adaptive Traffic Control Systems and 1,029 enforcement locations. Unlike fixed-time signals, adaptive systems are designed to adjust signal timings according to real-time traffic conditions. The planned system is also expected to support congestion and incident detection, quicker diversions, green corridors and priority movement for emergency vehicles.
Digital message boards and connected platforms are expected to provide updates on congestion, diversions, parking availability and traffic conditions. AI-based tools will assist with detecting violations including speeding, red-light jumping, wrong-way driving, illegal parking and mobile-phone use while driving.
Delhi has around 71 lakh active registered vehicles, with vehicle growth outpacing the expansion of road infrastructure. The traffic management system is therefore intended to improve the use of the existing network through real-time monitoring and dynamic control. For the Barapullah corridor, however, the immediate issue identified by police is the physical merging of multiple three-lane routes into the three-lane older flyover.
The Delhi Traffic Police’s current measures are the diversion of Phase-III traffic towards NH-24 and DND and deployment of personnel at the merging points. Further traffic arrangements will depend on conditions at the Old Barapullah Flyover and the implementation of the approved traffic management system.
