NEW DELHI -- Cars and other vehicles would not be allowed to ferry into the inner and outer circles of Connaught Place February onwards. The ban is part of a pilot project under the Smart City initiative aimed at reducing congestion in the area.
The decision was taken during a meet attended by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and the Delhi Police which was chaired by Union Minister of Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu.
During the meet it was decided to introduce 'pedestrianisation' of Connaught Place on a pilot basis for ground level testing of issues related to changes in traffic circulation, experience of pedestrians and shop owners, management of reclaimed parking lots, traffic load on outer circle etc.
NDMC and Delhi Police officials have stated that 'pedestrianisation' could be promoted by declaring the middle and inner circular roads of Connaught Place vehicle free by providing effective 'park and ride' services from major parking areas at Shivaji Stadium, Baba Kharak Singh Marg Palika parking.
Total parking capacity at these three locations is 3,172 and on an average only 1,088 vehicles are being parked. This unutilized capacity could be fully used by promoting 'park and ride' concept, they said.
Cycle hiring, battery operated vehicles etc., would be deployed effectively for the benefit of those parking vehicles at specified slots to reach the business district and also for the benefit of those using public transport besides senior citizens, women, children etc to move in the business district.
Further on restriction of vehicles, in the space available, landscaping, development of water bodies to act as humidifier in the walking zone, light and sound shows, side walk cafes, public plazas, organizing street festivals etc were discussed.
Naidu stressed that congestion free, accident free and crime free experience of visitors shall be the objective of pedestrianisation.
During the smart city review, NDMC Chairman Naresh Kumar informed that work on various major components of the smart city plan is progressing as planned.
He informed that work on strengthening of smart energy grid network would begin next month and work on automatic metering with automatic demand response work and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) in March this year.
Administrative approval for rehabilitation of water supply networks under smart water management, smart automatic meters and water quality sensors is likely to be accorded at the Council's meeting next week.
Regarding 11 decentralized Sewage Treatment Plans as envisaged in smart city plan of NDMC amounting to a total of 3.10 million litre per day, three plants would be completed by the end of this month and the remaining by June this year.
Erection of smart poles with CCTV cameras and connected to central command and control centres would be completed by July this year.
Four bids have been received for Smart Parking services and are under examination. Another five bids have been received for LED street lighting on 350 poles in first phase in Kaka Nagar and Chandra Gupta Road area and are being examined.
A Memorandum of Understanding is being finalized with telephone service provided MTNL for introducing Wi-Fi services in the NDMC area.
'Indica: A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent' Is More Compelling Than Sci-Fi
(01 of11)
Open Image Modal‘Narmada Man’ was the first early human discovered in 1982 in Hathnora, MP. Believed to be 236,000 years old, ‘he’ was subsequently discovered to be a woman between 27-32 years of age. The Narmada basin contains many early fossils. (credit:Arun Sonakia)
(02 of11)
Open Image ModalGeologists call the rocks at Kanyakumari, including the one on which the Vivekananda memorial stands, the ‘Gondwana junction’, because this marks the place where India, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, East Antarctica and Australia were once joined together, forming the supercontinent, Gondwana. (credit:Bridget Liddell)
(03 of11)
Open Image ModalBarapasaurus, India’s largest plant-eating dinosaur, lived approx. 176 million years ago. It measured around 18 metres and weighed about 7 tonnes—a 6-ft adult would only reach its thigh. It was displayed at the Indian Statistical Institute in 1977. (credit:Dmitry Bogdanov, Wikimedia Commons)
(04 of11)
Open Image ModalThis hot spring near Leh, Ladakh, is home to both the earliest sulphur anaerobes and oxygen-producing blue-green bacteria. These tough life forms have survived every extinction event since they evolved nearly 3 billion years ago. Should all life on Earth be wiped out, chances are that organisms like these will resume the process of evolution. (credit:Elroy Serrao)
(05 of11)
Open Image ModalNearly 300 million years ago, Mamal in Kashmir would have looked like this tree-fern forest of Arunachal. The Mamal forest was dominated by lycopod trees and could grow as high as 30ft but were still dwarfed by the 100ft-tall lycopods. Trees contributed to the Great Oxygen Event which helped life evolve on earth. (credit:Jahanu Sengupta)
(06 of11)
Open Image ModalThe Lonar crater was made by a meteor collision 50,000 years or so ago. A circular lake lies at the centre of the crater. Notice another small green lake to the right, close to the town, which was formed from a small portion of the meteorite, which disintegrated and fell here. (credit:NASA)
(07 of11)
Open Image ModalSpectacular discoveries of dinosaur nest sites and eggs have been made across India, but principally in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Dinosaur eggs clearly came in a variety of shapes and sizes. These are from Raiholi, Gujarat. (credit:Pranay Lal)
(08 of11)
Open Image ModalEverest is seldom seen without its cover of snow. But it is only thenthat the famous yellow band is visible. The light-grey summit of the Everest contains fossils of small creatures that lived on a sea shore about 350 million years ago, but t now sit 8500 metres above sea level. (credit:Rajesh Pant)
(09 of11)
Open Image ModalThese Indian lizards lived 160 million years ago. Here two Indosuchus (right) have ganged up to ward off a challenge from the larger Rajasaurus (left). In the foreground, smaller Indosaurus feed on bits of flesh that they have stolen from the carcass of a juvenile Titanosaur. (credit:Sergey Krasovskiy)
(10 of11)
Open Image ModalRamanagara rocks, not far from Bengaluru, were formed around 2.5 billion years ago, and establish India as one of the oldest countries in the world. But the rocks are more famous for lending an eerie atmosphere to the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay. This was the perch of Samba, the henchman of the arch villain, Gabbar Singh! (credit:Tanmay Haldar)
(11 of11)
Open Image ModalThis image of the delta of the Ganga and Brahmaputra at the peak of monsoons, shows sediment a carried deep into the Bay of Bengal to form the Bengal Fans. Compared to other rivers, sediments deposited by the Bengal Fans are the thickest and largest in size, and extend several thousand kms. (credit:European Space Agency)