Ring road’s facelift in the pipeline

Tribune News Service

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Amritsar, November 17

Under the Smart City project, the government has conceptualised a plan to beautify the 7.5-km inner ring road with state-of-the-art street infrastructure, furniture and separate lanes to decongest the area.

Komal Mittal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Amritsar Smart City Ltd, stated that the ring road would be redeveloped. The project has been launched to de-stress the walled city area. The outer circular road of the walled city will be re-developed as a smart road. The 7.5-km road, 12 gates of the historic fortification, has tourism attraction.

As of today, the circular road is highly unorganised due to high population density, numerous commercial activities, non-uniform geometry, above-ground utilities and lack of pedestrian path. Shared carriage ways for motorised and non-motorised makes this area unsafe for pedestrians and non-motorists.

According to the officials concerned, Smart Road is one of the most important developments which ensure improvement, such as undergrounding overhead wires, providing smart streetscape, organised parking, pedestrian-friendly pathways and encouragement to non-motorised pathways. It will be designed considering long-term sustainable development and to increase quality of life for the users, there will be particular focus on safety of women, children, elderly and differently-abled persons.