Coming soon: 6-lane road under IGI runway

By October, you could be driving through an underground tunnel below IGI Airport's main runway -- with planes landing and taking off on top -- to speed away to the new domestic-cum-international terminal (T3) that will start opening in three months from now.

Worried that the existing single approach to the T3 site, next to the existing international terminal, will become a traffic nightmare once almost all domestic and entire foreign passengers drive to and from there, the government wants the new link ready in time for the Commonwealth Games that start from October 3.

The plan is to have the new road from Dwarka roundabout's lane towards Mehramnagar turn (near the existing domestic airport), take it under the main runway and then connect it to a link road that will lead to T3. Currently, this one-way link road is used by people coming from the international airport to drive to Vasant Kunj from under the Radisson flyover.

"The six-lane new link will be about 1.5km long with the tunnel portion under the runway being 343 metres. The total cost will be about Rs 65 crore. The plan is that Delhi government will fund the project that would be implemented by Airports Authority of India (AAI) and maintained by the Delhi International Airport Pvt Ltd (DIAL)," a source said.

This proposal is learnt to have been taken up at a recent joint meeting of all stakeholders like aviation ministry, Delhi government, AAI, DGCA and DDA and chaired by the cabinet secretary. "All security issues related to a road running under an operational runway and airport have been taken care of," said a highly placed source.

As per the plan, work on the tunnel portion should start and be completed when the main runway is closed for recarpeting from March to September. That time only the newest airstrip (Shiv Murti side) and shortest one (near Dwarka) will be used. "The tunnel is proposed to pass almost at the end of the runway near the jumbo point," the source added.

This runway-tunnel plan had to be drawn up as the original proposal to have an underground link from a point in the U-shaped part of NH 8 that goes up to Radisson ran into trouble with the private Gurgaon Expressway concessionaire. One plan was to have a road from near the base of the flyover -- that has clover leaves going towards the domestic airport and Dwarka on one side, and Gurgaon and the international airport on the other -- and then have an underground link to connect it to a road leading to T3.

The other was to have a tunnel near the Radisson flyover to link it across the road airport side.

"But the concessionaire protested, saying this would lead to `toll leak' as motorists would drive on part of their facility and get off before paying any toll at the toll gate on the approach road to the international terminal," said sources.

Since the compensation being sought for this alleged toll leakage was too high, the government decided to work out alternate plans that led to the first of its kind runway-tunnel idea. Connectivity to T3 is being monitored at the highest level by the cabinet secretariat. At present, domestic passengers drive towards Dwarka roundabout from the new flyover (made famous by its long wait for inauguration by a VVIP). International passengers drive down towards the NH 8 portion that leads to Gurgaon and international airport from the Radisson flyover after clearing the toll plazas at both approaches.

Once T3 is ready, almost all domestic airlines will shift there -- barring a few budget carriers that will operate from 1D terminal at the current domestic airport side. "In view of the rush of traffic coming to and from the international terminal, the sole approach road of NH 8 to T3 is going to become a major bottleneck. To avoid that, this plan has been conceived and a new link must be operational before Commonwealth Games begin. Having a clear approach to the new terminal is as important as the new facility itself," a source said.

In fact, this runway-tunnel link is in addition to the bigger plan of having another link road to T3 from Dwarka side that is supposed to be ready in two to three years. Recently, aviation minister Praful Patel met Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit to stress on the need for multiple approaches to T3.

"The national facilitation committee headed by cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar is going to meet on January 14 and the issue of access to T3 is likely to come up there in a big way. Delhi government had some reservations about funding this link as they considered it an internal airport road. All these issues will have to be sorted out at the earliest," an official said.