Between 9pm and 11pm, Delhi-bound commuters on the expressway find their path constricted or blocked by a battery of trucks and smaller goods carriers that line up – sometimes single-file, sometimes double – before the toll plaza at the UP Gate (Ghazipur) border.
The trucks are parked along the length of the flyover, all the way to Khoda underpass nearly a kilometre away, and beyond if truck volume is heavy. The main expressway has three lanes and NH-9 adjacent to it four. Trucks take up at least half the lane width available to traffic. By midnight, this queue of parked trucks gradually melts away, but another forms at dawn.
Why does this happen?
Commercial goods vehicles are not allowed to ply in Delhi between 7am to 11am and 5pm to 11 pm. So, trucks and other goods carriers that reach early simply park on the expressway before the border and wait, their drivers using the time for dinner or to catch a nap. With neither police nor the National Highways Authority of India stopping them, this has over months become a practice. These correspondents found trucks carrying a range of goods – furniture, garments, automobile parts, home decor, electronic goods, sports equipment, construction materials, even books – parked on the DME after 9pm.
With goods, and passengers
Mohammad Akhtar, who was taking gym gear to Delhi, said he lived in Meerut and ran errands to the capital regularly. “I come here and wait for the no-entry restriction to lift,” said Akhtar. Ajay Yadav said he wouldn’t risk entering Delhi before 11pm. “The penalty for violating no-entry is substantial, ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 40,000, depending on the truck size,” he said.
Goods vehicles loaded with passengers also come to the border and wait, many of them carrying women and children. One such still had some way to go – to Gurgaon for a ‘mundan’ ceremony. There’s 15 of us, so we decided to go in a truck,” said Umesh Kumar, who was leading the group.
A problem, admit truckers
Kritibhushan Sharma from the Meerut Truck Transport Association and Chaudhury Vedpal Singh from the Noida Transport Association acknowledged truck parking led to congestion and jams on the expressway. Sharma said that there are nearly 1,000 trucks owned by his association members that ply in UP and Delhi-NCR. “Since truck drivers do not have fixed working hours, they sometimes end up reaching the border during no-entry. We will ask them to avoid doing so,” he said.
“The issue is that trucks come from different parts of the state and the route has uncertainties like delays in loading, jams, etc. We request the govt to give them some parking space so that the road is encroachment-free,” Singh said.
Police’s job: NHAI
NHAI project director Dheeraj Singh underlined the need for enforcement by traffic police, which is not the highway authority’s domain. Ghaziabad police hold jurisdiction on the DME stretch affected by truck parking. “We will issue a letter to the city traffic police and ask them to conduct a drive and ensure the trucks do not stand on DME at night,” he told TOI.
It’s not just trucks
People also come to the expressway to shop. With police doing little to ensure DME and NH-9 are clear for traffic, food and vegetable vendors have set up shop on both sides of the highway, on the pavements and inside the underpasses. So, before the trucks block your path, people coming to buy everything from bhindi to broccoli will. Add to that e-rickshaw and auto stands that occupy thoroughfare space and you have an obstacle course.
The UP Gate area sees a convergence of jurisdictions of Delhi and UP (Ghaziabad) police. But neither has intervened to clear the choke points or regulate traffic. The encroachment problem is mostly on the Ghaziabad side. To make policing stronger in Ghaziabad, UP govt has turned it into a commissionerate. But on DME and NH-9, it’s been largely ineffective.
Additional DCP (traffic) Ghaziabad Virendra Kumar said police were aware of the problem and promised to take appropriate action. “Trucks stop at the border due to no-entry restrictions. The traffic police conduct drives till 10pm. However, we have taken notice of this and we will take suitable measures to ease the situation,” he said.