Sarita Vihar flyover in southeast Delhi to be partially shut

The Public Works Department (PWD) is set to partially shut the Sarita Vihar flyover in southeast Delhi for repairs from the first week of October, officials said, adding that they have received approval for the same from the traffic police.
The partial closure of the flyover to repair expansion joints is likely to affect vehicular movement in parts of south, east and southeast Delhi in areas such as Badarpur, Jaitpur, Kalindi Kunj and New Friends Colony, traffic police officers said.
PWD officials said the repairs on the four-lane flyover will take approximately 60 days — 30 for each carriageway — and will be carried out in four phases.
“It will take 30 days to repair each carriageway. The stretch from Ashram to Badarpur will be repaired in the first and second phases, while work on the stretch from Badarpur to Ashram will be carried out in the third and fourth phases. However, the flyover will never be shut completely as one lane of the carriageway under repairs will be open for traffic,” an official said, on condition of anonymity.
Traffic police officials said that the NOC for the long-pending work has been given for the first phase of 30 days for now. Initially, work on the stretch from Ashram to Faridabad will be initiated in one lane for 15 days and the second lane for the next 15 days.
“This is an important stretch that sees heavy traffic. We had given the NOC earlier as well but the work was not started. We hope that it is going to start now from October 1. We will issue a traffic advisory over the weekend and will also make diversions. Signages about the diversions will also be put up over the weekend. NOC for the next phase from Faridabad to Ashram will also be given soon for the next 30 days,” said a senior Delhi traffic police official.
The PWD official quoted above said the flyover was built by the Delhi Development Authority in 2001 and is in urgent need for repairs.
“There are seven parallel expansion joints along the flyover that need to be replaced. So, 28 such metal plates will be replaced — seven in each lane. Each carriageway will need to be closed for 25-30 days, but we will be closing only one lane of the carriageway at one time. After the expansion joints are replaced, there will be a concrete cover and blacktopping, followed by curing that will take about 10 days,” the official said.
The official said that a similar strategy of closing just one lane at any time was followed while repairing the Chirag Delhi flyover last year.
To be sure, repairs on the Sarita Vihar flyover have been planned since 2023, but despite receiving approval from the traffic police as early as May this year, the work was put off at least twice — once, because newspaper advertisements about traffic diversions were not published on time, and police withdrew the no-objection certificate due to the movement of kanwars, and a second time, as the monsoons had started, leading to high-than-usual traffic in the area.
Abhishek Awasthi, a resident of Sarita Vihar said, “It is so difficult to use the roads in this area already as the traffic has multiplied in the last couple of years. When the Ashram flyover was being made, it had become routine for us to cross just one traffic light in half an hour. We had just been relieved and this will start now.”