AUDA authorities say that if a new ring road is not constructed, the present one will not be able to accommodate the heavy traffic in the next four to five years, as scores of industrial estates and special economic zones are coming up within a radius of 50 km of the city. While Sanand is developing into an auto hub with Tata’s Nano car project, nearby Changodara has already become a pharmaceutical hub. Both are linked with the SP Ring Road.

According to AUDA officials, the development of five satellite towns in the periphery pf Ahmedabad — Kalol, Bareja, Sanand Mahemdabad and Dahegam — will also

add to the traffic on this stretch, which also caters to heavy traffic coming from south and central Gujarat industrial estates like Vapi and Ankleshwar.

Officials said that when the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar ring road was built in 1972, it was constructed as a national highway for heavy vehicles and inter-state traffic. However, with the growth of the city on the western side resulting into traffic congestion, it became an urban road losing its national highway character. That led to the construction of the 76-km long SP Ring Road and all inter-state traffic was diverted to this stretch.

But now the same thing, according to officials, is happening with this road. “SP Ring Road is going to receive a very heavy traffic in the next five years, and if no planning is done in this respect now, it will result into a chaos as far as heavy traffic is concerned,” AUDA Chairman Dharmendra Shah told The Indian Express.

He said that a provision for the ring road was being made in the development plan for 64 villages. Shah added that a new road was also required with the city growing into a metro and attracting people from all over the country. The width of the new ring road will be 90 metres. It will be the fourth ring road of the city, he added.

The ongoing concretisation of the one-km stretch has created a slope between the lanes on the road leading to Haji Ali Junction outside the Lala Lajpatrai College. The lane next to the divider has been concretised while the other three are still in asphalt, which has created an angular height difference of almost 45 degrees.

An official from the roads department confirmed that since the concretised lane was on a height, the lane next to it had sloped downwards. “Since there is heavy traffic flow on this road, we cannot carry out concretisation work on more than one lane as it would bottleneck the traffic further. We have received many complaints from citizens about the angle at which the cars have to ride; we understand that it is a traffic hazard too.”

Chief engineer (Roads) AV Ralkar said the BMC planned to raise the level of the other lanes by laying additional layers of asphalt to solve the problem. “It is not possible to concretise the stretch overnight. So to solve the problem temporarily, we will carry out asphalt laying on these lanes till they are taken up for concretisation.” 

The BMC has completed work on three of the eight lanes so far. The work is slated for completion by May 2012.