Noida: It is 5.30 pm, nearly 4.5 km before Gaur City Chowk, and traffic has already begun to crawl. Cars, buses, dumpers, autorickshaws, two-wheelers and commercial vehicles stretch across the carriageway, inching forward bumper-to-bumper as commuters brace for another long wait.Over the past six months, ongoing construction of an underpass at Gaur City junction has turned one of the city’s busiest corridors — the junction serves as a crucial link with Noida’s sectors 62 and 63, NH-9, Ghaziabad and Delhi — into a major choke point, stretching travel time and testing commuters’ patience. With no metro connectivity and cabs and autorickshaws plugging the gap for missing last-mile connectivity, for thousands of residents of Greater Noida West, this has become an everyday reality.For 40-year-old Anurag Singh Chauhan, an employee at BHEL in Delhi who lives in Greater Noida’s Sector 3, about 38 km from his office, what was once a manageable commute has turned into a nearly three-hour ordeal. “I leave office around 5.45 pm and reach home only between 8 and 8.45 pm. Spending an hour stuck between Parthala Bridge and Gaur Chowk has become a daily routine,” Chauhan said. He added that traffic police personnel are rarely deployed to manage the congestion, leaving vehicles to navigate the bottlenecks on their own. “Where police are present, they are mostly seen policing local autorickshaws and private cabs rather than easing the jams,” he said.
The 700metre, six-lane underpass will provide a direct link between Greater Noida, Gaur City and the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, allowing vehicles to bypass the intersection and reduce traffic load at the junction
By 6.15 pm, the evening rush hour kicks in. Drivers switching lanes to gain a few metres end up blocking intersections and service roads, and the congestion spills onto adjoining residential roads.Pravesh Kumar, an app-based autorickshaw driver who operates in Noida and Greater Noida, said the jams are one of the biggest challenges of his workday. “The app shows Gaur City Mall to Ek Murti Chowk is just 4.2 km, a nine-minute ride. But once stuck in traffic, it can stretch well beyond 30 to 40 minutes,” Kumar said. “Passengers get frustrated and ask us to take shortcuts, but there’s only one route. When one trip gets delayed, I lose the chance to take more rides that day.”For Ravi Rai, a software engineer who works in Noida’s Sector 126 and lives in Gaur City 2, the snarl has forced him to rework his daily routine. “The distance is merely 18 km, but it takes over an hour to reach the spot. I leave home around 9.30 am and reach office only by 11.30 am. The problem has become much bigger in the last six months since construction started,” Rai said, adding that the return journey is often worse. “I leave office around 7.15 pm, but on weekends I can’t reach home before 9 pm. Traffic starts building up near Gaur Chowk itself, and sometimes vehicles barely move for several minutes,” he said.Weekends bring additional pressure, with shoppers heading to Gaur City Mall merging with office traffic and vehicles bound for Ghaziabad, Kisan Chowk, Nirala Estate and nearby residential sectors.
Traffic desending from Parthala flyover to Gaur Chowk
The construction has also created problems beyond delays. Dust from excavation work has also become a concern for residents and pedestrians along the corridor, as debris shifted nearly 100 metres away lies uncovered and unattended. Ongoing footpath work has added to the disruption.Somi Devi, a resident of Durga Enclave, said she now avoids stepping out unless necessary. “There is so much dust. I have asthma, and it is difficult to breathe. Ever since construction began, I barely step out,” she said.Residents also questioned the traffic management at the site, saying cops are almost always absent at the intersections. Traffic police, however, said measures are already in place and attributed the congestion to rapid urbanisation and rising vehicle numbers.DCP (traffic) Abhay Kumar Mishra said four personnel are deployed in the area to regulate movement at every roundabout, and that the situation would improve once the underpass becomes operational. He said the roads are carrying far more traffic than they were designed for, with a large number of commuters travelling towards the increasingly populated Bisrakh area, besides traffic headed to Ghaziabad.To ease congestion, police have also installed barricades along service lanes and routes leading to Ek Murti, Teen Murti and Char Murti to stagger movement. Mishra said the area also needs more U-turns instead of roundabouts, which add to congestion, and that weekend crowds at Gaur City Mall present a separate challenge as parking fills up quickly.Residents acknowledge the underpass could eventually ease traffic but say the disruption has already lasted long enough to affect daily routines. “The underpass may solve the problem in the future, but people have to travel every day until then. If traffic is managed properly, at least some of the delay can be reduced,” Chauhan said.
