Barapullah Phase-III flyover sees massive traffic jams, commuters stuck for over an hour

The 3.5-km Barapullah Phase-III flyover was inaugurated on September 29. | Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA Days after the Barapullah Phase-III flyover was thrown open with a promise of cutting the journey from Mayur Vihar to AIIMS to just 15 minutes, commuters are now spending more than an hour inching through traffic on the newly opened corridor.On Monday (October 5, 2026), traffic queues stretching over 2 kilometres brought the 3.5-km stretch to a crawl, with commuters reporting waiting times of 70–100 minutes. Videos shared by commuters showed vehicles packed bumper-to-bumper on the elevated road, with even ambulances caught in the snarl.“I have been stuck on the flyover for the past 25 minutes in a traffic jam,” a commuter travelling from Noida towards New Delhi told The Hindu at around 10.30 a.m. When contacted again an hour later, the commuter said they were still stuck and it had taken more than 70 minutes just to get off the flyover.“This is the route from Mayur Vihar towards AIIMS. There is a jam of around 2 km on this new road. Even an ambulance is stuck,” another commuter said, sharing a video of the traffic snarl.Another commuter described the stretch as “completely blocked”, saying traffic had remained stationary for nearly an hour and questioning the absence of traffic personnel on that particular stretch. The Delhi Traffic Police on Monday acknowledged that the new corridor was witnessing heavy congestion and said a key problem was that the traffic situation on the newly opened road was not yet being reflected accurately on Google Maps. The police said this was prompting commuters to continue taking the route, adding to the volume of traffic and the bottleneck at Barapullah Junction.“Congestion on Barapullah Phase-III is not being reflected on Google Maps, due to which commuters are continuing to take this route. This has resulted in heavy traffic volume and a bottleneck at Barapullah Junction, causing congestion to extend for a considerable distance,” the police said in a post on X.The traffic police subsequently diverted vehicles from Barapullah Phase-III towards NH-24 and the Delhi-Noida Direct (DND) and advised commuters to avoid the affected stretch.Merger point a bottleneckHowever, the problem is not simply a matter of navigation apps. South Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sandeep Gupta said the department had identified the merger at the old Barapullah flyover as a major bottleneck.According to the traffic police’s assessment, the new Phase-III carriageway has three lanes, while the loops from the Sarai Kale Khan and DND sides also carry traffic towards the existing three-lane Barapullah flyover. This means traffic from the equivalent of roughly nine lanes is converging into three lanes.The police have deployed personnel near Sundial Park, where the Ring Road meets the Barapullah Elevated Road, and are manually regulating vehicles at the merger point. “The merger point is tricky, and there will be some waiting there. We are now managing the convergence manually, allowing traffic streams to move one by one to avoid congestion. This has reduced the convergence problem but means some waiting at the merger point,” Mr Gupta said.The department has also flagged the issue to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), seeking a safer road curvature.Mr Gupta said the traffic police had already written to Google about the inaccurate representation of traffic conditions on the newly opened corridor.“The company has sought seven to 10 days. Whenever a new road opens, the algorithm needs to study the baseline traffic data and then analyse the movement. Once sufficient data is available, the traffic pattern should be reflected more accurately,” he said.Until then, the police said commuters could continue to be drawn towards the new corridor by navigation applications showing relatively free-flowing traffic even when vehicles were already queuing up on the ground.The Phase-III corridor, stretching around 3.5 km between Mayur Vihar-I and Sarai Kale Khan, was inaugurated on September 29. Published - October 06, 2026 12:49 am IST