Rawalpindi Ring Road Project Pulled Out of Cold Storage

Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) has pulled the much-awaited Ring Road project out of cold storage to ease fast growing traffic congestion and provide faster road access to outskirts of the city.

Sources said RDA has submitted recently prepared revised blue print for the Ring Road project to the newly installed provincial government which is expected to give a green signal for early initiation of the project in the next couple of weeks.After final approval from the provincial government the first out of three phases of the project from Mall Road to Faizabad would be completed in three years from the date of its initiation, the sources said.

“The Shahbaz-led provincial government is highly interested in development of Rawalpindi that is why PML-N elected members are consistently engaged with the civic bodies to ensure early start of various uplift projects including the Ring Road project in the city,” an RDA official said.According to the proposed plan, the road project costing around Rs2.5 billion would start from Rawat and terminate at Haji Camp on Peshawar Road and would connect the neighbourhoods of Adiala, Chakri and Chauntra besides providing a separate route for traffic from Peshawar to Lahore.

The revised layout plan of the project would have 14 interchanges at the interval of 1.5 to 2 kilometres, but there would be controlled access to this road as hand-pushed carts, rickshaws and some other types of vehicles would not be allowed to ply on the road.A Malaysian company had already completed the aerial survey of the project in 2004 while alignment of the first phase of the project has been prepared and submitted by RDA.

The idea of the Ring Road was first presented in a Guided Development Plan prepared by RDA long ago and the previous district government took various measures to initiate this project on built, operate and transfer (BOT) basis.RDA spokesman Nauman Tariq said spadework on the Ring Road project was under way at a faster pace and completion of this project would help reduce the traffic problems especially on the main roads of the city.

“The RDA director general has also issued directives to complete required basic work on various other projects including Leh Expressway to ensure their early initiation,” he said.Commuters who travel to areas including Adiala and Chakri have to pass through the downtown that caused severe traffic congestion in the inner arteries of the cities.

The road along the outer boundary would greatly help lessen traffic load in inner parts of the city.Numbers of housing societies are yet to initiate their construction work in the outskirts of the city and construction of the Ring Road may provide these societies an easy and fast access thus boosting estate business in these areas.

RDA Director General Makeen Shahbaz told ‘The News’ that the revised summary of three-phased Ring Road project has been submitted to the provincial government and the work on the project would be started soon after its final approval.“We are highly committed to solving the traffic problem and the Ring Road would provide an alternative route to most of the vehicular traffic currently using inner roads of the city,” he said.

Makeen Shahbaz said various uplift projects would be initiated in the coming months that would certainly give a facelift to the city that is facing different kinds of problems.