Commuters on Islamabad Highway in dire need of help

Islamabad:It was anticipated that the flow of traffic on the Islamabad Highway, up and down from Gulberg Green to Rawat T-chowk, will become much improved and indeed it turned out to be so.

However, with the removal of ‘Gulberg Green Bottleneck’ after the completion and opening of the new east-side bridge, a new bottleneck has popped on the ‘Railways Overhead Bridge’. The Rawat-bound East-side of the bridge was expanded to five-lane but the Islamabad-bound Bridge could not be expanded because of a big difference in height-level of this part. To build a new bridge on the west side the existing bridge was required to be dismantled. The dismantling of the old bridge is almost done and work on the new 5-lane bridge on Railway track is already started but the pace of work on this project seems to be painfully slow because at least 31 trains pass under this bridge and work has to be adjusted according to their movements.

So far 6 girders out of 7 have been prepared and one is left. At the same time work on 60 concrete piles is continuing and once those will be completed the construction of columns will start. There is likely to be 8 to 10 columns around 8 to 10 meter high.

Engineers engaged on this project said that the west side Railway Bridge is expected to be completed by 28 February, 2024. Once this part of the bridge is also completed and opened, the traffic flow will become a lot smoother, the engineer said.

The up and down traffic on this part has been diverted on the expanded East-side bridge by placing dividers and cement slabs but like the Gulberg Green bottleneck, the Rawat-bound traffic flowing in six-lanes squeezes to three-lanes at this point, making an arrowhead, causing serious traffic congestion and prolonged blockades. The slow-moving over-loaded heavy traffic multiplies the problem because the truckers are not shy of over-taking even at this point while moving at snail’s pace. The Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) officers and officials frantically try to control the situation but most of the time they found themselves absolutely helpless.

No wonder they give up after trying for a while because of exhaustion as the air at this point, which may not be more than half a kilometer in length, is thickly polluted with fuel fumes emitting from the idling vehicles and heavy amount of dust rising from the construction site on the western side of the highway making it laborious to breath even with a face mask on.

The situation at this point for the ITP officers and officials is seriously hazardous for their health because of this pollution and nerve wrecking efforts to keep the traffic flowing. Another problem is that a big percentage of commuter living in private housing societies including Korang Town, Pakistan town, Police Foundation and Doctor’s Town also need to cross take PWD Underpass as it is the nearest turn available to them to reach their destinations.

These housing societies have already constructed a direct link to the Islamabad Highway as a result of which a big chunk of commuters have shifted to this route, melting in the mainstream traffic from their own side instead of taking the PWD underpass route. If the Capital Development Authority (CDA), in collaboration with ITP may built a couple of ‘Hard U-turns’, like those on the Srinagar Highway at strategic locations to make it ‘signal free’ the commuters going to these housing societies will leave the traffic flow on the Highway, which will lead to easing traffic load pressure on the Islamabad Highway. This step would also take a big chunk of traffic load off the PWD main road.