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17/08/11

Lane Driving is inSane Driving!

There is a 90km roadtrip that I do every day for work, and pass by a bottleneck which was initially supposed to be a flyover to ease traffic movement! Please welcome the RTR Flyover, or Rao Tula Ram Flyover!

Delhi has its fair share of flyovers, and they have really helped the traffic movement! The number of vehicles increasing is what causes the jams! not these flyovers! This one however has a history!

When RTR was inaugurated, traffic was allowed to move from Subroto Park/Gurgaon/Airports towards RK Puram! Someone in the Delhi Traffic Police realised that it was causing way too many jams, and reversed the traffic flow... So now this 3 lane flyover was for people moving from RK Puram/Vasant Vihar/Munirka towards Subroto Park/Gurgaon/Airports, and started causing the jam on the other side!

Some more brainstorming made it a time bound flyover... mornings one side, and evenings the other side! So jams now moved from one side to the other!

And finally, they have now allowed traffic from both sides to use the flyover, the middle lane is used as a the imaginary median, and there is enough space kept at the entry for a single lane traffic on both sides!

All of these approaches had their followers and critics both, but what boggles me at times is that why could they not build a wider flyover like the 1000s others in Delhi!


But this post is not about what you have just read! this post is about what you are going to read, if you have reached this far!


There is a trick to get onto the RTR... I have labelled the approaching traffic lanes as

1. Sharafat Lane (This is the right most lane)
2. Badmash Lane (Second to the right most)
3. Badtameez Lane (Third/Fourth to the right most)
4. Pencho Lane (Any other lane)

Now as the names suggest, the Sharafat lane is the slowest of them all... If you are stuck here, you are probably going to enter the flyover after 3 vehicles from Pencho Lane, 2-3 from Badtameez Lane, and 2 from Badtameez Lane have zoomed past... Let's see how this looks like from the top usually!


4 comments:

  1. Beautiful post! Well, coming from Delhi I can totally appreciate what you are saying :)

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  2. Being a victim of Sharafat lane umpteen number of times (being in Delhi for few months before spending lot of time in Bangalore), a better way is to be in the left most lane and avoid the RTR flyover. After you cross the Sharafat-Pencho lane junction, be in the rightmost lane. It works for me. It may take 2 mins longer but controls my anger :)

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  3. @ Ambuj : Good approach! I usually stick to the badmash lane :) after a few attempts, I am able to cross... On other days, I just drive on the extreme left before the RTR and do not take the flyover at all :)

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