Title:
Road Safety Audit and Proposal for Corridor Extension Plan: Case Study Barapullah Corridor, New Delhi, India
Abstract:
Delhi, the capital of India, has become an important centre for international events and is home to over 7 million vehicles, including 2 million cars and an equal number of motorcycles. Also, the large number of signalized intersections in the city has led to excessive travel time and fuel consumption leading to a loss of almost 420 million man-hours every month while commuting between home and office through public transport, due to the traffic congestion and road accidents. Barapullah elevated corridor having a length of about 4.4 km (Phase-I) was constructed and used as an exclusive corridor for the sports personnel between the Games village to the Jawahar Lal Nehru (JLN) Stadium in New Delhi during Commonwealth Games, 2010 and was taken as the case study for this project. The corridor was opened to public post Commonwealth Games in October 2010 and aimed to provide an efficient connectivity to the commuters passing through busy Lala Lajpat Rai road and Mathura road connecting the Ring road. This study focuses on Road Safety Audit (RSA) for Post-opening Stage of the Barapullah elevated corridor which is a vital tool for safety management system alongside the proposal to extend the corridor for east – west connectivity to ease the traffic flow in Delhi. The main objective is to identify potential safety problems and to suggest measures to mitigate them. RSA is a vital tool of safety management system and makes it necessary for the corridor to be safety conscious when planning, designing, constructing, maintaining and operating road & traffic systems. The RSA for Post-opening Stage conducted on the Barapullah corridor confirm the issues of lack of traffic control devices and markings on the corridor. The survey data assessed for the Spot speed analysis illustrates a lower rate of lane utilization of the corridor for movement in both directions. While moving from Sarai Kale Khan towards JLN Stadium, theoretical frequency in the normal distribution curve computes to 40.7% for a speed of 40 km/h, while theoretical frequency in the reverse direction computes to 40.32% for a speed of 50 km/h. The cumulative frequency curve illustrates the peak at a speed of 55 km/h in both directions of traffic. Thus, the survey result exemplifies the movement of low traffic volume at high speed on the corridor due to its limited connectivity. Hence, to increase the lane utilization, augmentation of the corridor is required at both approaches to enlarge the east – west connectivity in the city. Seeking the issue, an extension of Barapullah corridor towards Mayur Vihar in the east and Karol Bagh & Janakpuri in the west was proposed as an elevated corridor. It was designed to entice traffic for achieving lane utilization and to provide direct access from east to west of the city via the proposed route. This will also effect in providing an analogous corridor to the Ring road in the city and reduce the excessive traffic volume on it. After proposing the extensions to the Barapullah corridor in east and west directions, it was analyzed that the travel time for commuters will reduce from 60 mins to 25 mins, saving about 35 mins respectively.
