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Nagpur’s Flyover Rush Traps Citizens in Traffic and Construction Chaos

Nagpur’s Flyover Rush Traps Citizens in Traffic and Construction Chaos
Nagpur’s Flyover Rush Traps Citizens in Traffic and Construction Chaos

During a recent monsoon in Nagpur, the largest city of Vidarbha, a newly constructed flyover in the city’s Kamptee suburb developed a massive crater just days before its scheduled inauguration.


The incident, captured on video by stunned residents, sparked public outrage and raised suspicions of corruption in the project’s construction. This dramatic collapse has become emblematic of the troubles plaguing Nagpur’s ongoing flyover-building spree. Over the past few years, the city has launched a series of ambitious overpass and road projects promising to ease chronic traffic congestion.


Instead, these initiatives have often unleashed fresh chaos in the form of perpetual traffic snarls, confusing detours, and even structural failures, leaving commuters increasingly frustrated. Nagpur’s drive to modernise its infrastructure is now under scrutiny as design flaws, project delays, and apparent mismanagement turn the promise of smoother travel into a daily ordeal for its citizens.


Ambitious Flyover Spree, Design Flaws and Planning Gaps


Cranes tower over half-built overpasses, roadsides are lined with barricades, and work crews constantly dig up streets. It’s a scene Nagpur’s residents have become all too familiar with. This construction boom involves multiple agencies, including the PWD, NMC, Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT), MahaMetro, and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), all working simultaneously on projects across the city.


Nagpur even earned the nickname “City of Flyovers” in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, reflecting local pride in its growing network of concrete spans.

The goal of this spree is straightforward: decongest major junctions, eliminate long waits at railway crossings, and future-proof the city’s traffic flow as it grows. Hundreds of crores of rupees have been poured into new overbridges and underpasses, all promising faster commutes for the city’s motorists.


However, the flurry of construction has also brought substantial disruption. As multiple works unfold concurrently, residents have had to navigate barricaded lanes, dug-up roads and sudden diversions on their daily commutes. Frequent dust, noise, and traffic delays have become an accepted cost of Nagpur’s rapid makeover, even before many of the new flyovers are fully operational.


Among the new projects, a few glaring design flaws have ended up defeating their own purpose. Built at a cost of ₹219 crore and opened in early 2020, the 3.9-km Sadar flyover in the heart of the city was meant to cure a notorious traffic choke point.


Instead, its flawed layout, particularly a narrow landing section near a major intersection, created a fresh bottleneck. Within weeks of opening, authorities had to shut down an adjoining road as a stopgap measure, forcing motorists to take a lengthy detour through congested side streets.


Union minister Nitin Gadkari, a senior leader from Nagpur, eventually acknowledged the Sadar flyover’s design fault and announced a ₹34 crore plan to modify the landing and smooth out traffic flow. Yet even a month after that announcement, confusion reigned over which agency would carry out the repairs, and no work had begun. This lack of coordination among NHAI, the state PWD and the metro authorities meant the promised fix stalled in paperwork, leaving thousands of daily commuters to continue bearing the brunt of the flyover’s mistakes.


A similar planning lapse is evident in the new flyover extension at Nagpur’s Kawrapeth railway crossing. This ₹141-crore project, built by the PWD to connect two existing flyovers, ended up as a precarious T-shaped overpass with no dedicated exit of its own.

Traffic officials initially refused to open it after a safety audit found the flyover’s abrupt merge and narrow lanes on one side to be dangerous. However, under public pressure, the extension was eventually opened, and almost immediately, it became a hotspot for wrong-way driving and haphazard U-turns as confused motorists navigated the odd design.


Residents living near the Kawrapeth flyover have criticised the project’s planning, with one calling the extension “completely unnecessary” and saying it “has only made commuting more dangerous.” Without proper signage, lane markings or dividers in place initially, and with no traffic police able to monitor an elevated road, the flyover’s opening created a dangerous free-for-all during peak hours.


Local authorities have since promised corrective measures, such as installing continuous median dividers, but those fixes are expected to take several more months to materialise.


Experts say many of these issues could have been avoided with better planning and technical oversight. Transportation engineers from Nagpur’s Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) note that agencies often embark on flyover projects based on “preconceived notions” rather than thorough traffic studies.


In several cases, designs were finalised with little or no consultation with traffic engineering experts, only for basic geometric design errors to surface after construction.


VNIT faculty report that they are typically called in to diagnose problems once they occur, rather than being involved at the design stage when flaws could be prevented. It’s a reactive approach that all but guarantees costly mistakes on the ground.


Quality Issues and Years-Long Delays

Quality Issues and Years-Long Delays in flyover projects at Nagpur
Quality Issues and Years-Long Delays

In July 2025, a particularly alarming episode underscored the cost of poor construction quality.


A 500-metre flyover at Kamthi on Nagpur’s outskirts, under construction since 2020, caved in just days before its scheduled inauguration.

After a bout of heavy rain, large craters opened up in the flyover’s deck, sparking outrage among locals and immediate questions about the workmanship. Videos of the damage spread on social media, and the contractor scrambled to fill the holes overnight. “This bridge was under construction for five years, and it collapsed before opening… This clearly reflects poor quality work and corruption,” one exasperated resident remarked at the scene.


The incident heightened public fears that corners may be getting cut in the rush to build, putting lives at risk even before a project is commissioned.


Nagpur’s rapid infrastructure push has also exposed issues of basic workmanship. Newly concreted roads have developed uneven surfaces and drainage problems, leading to waterlogging whenever it rains. Even a simple traffic island redesign at a city square had to be ripped up and redone weeks after completion, due to a miscalculation that made the initial design unworkable.


Almost every underpass in the city turns into a waterlogged tunnel in the monsoon, as elevated road levels trap rainwater instead of channelling it away.


These quality lapses not only inconvenience the public but also waste public funds on repairs and rework.

In Vidarbha’s hub city, Nagpur, several marquee flyover projects have stretched on for years past their deadlines, testing the public’s patience. The most prominent is the Kamal Chowk to Dighori corridor, a ₹998 crore mega-flyover sanctioned in 2015 to connect north and south Nagpur with a 15-minute drive.


A decade later, that project is still incomplete. What was meant to be a symbol of development has instead become a daily source of dust and detours for commuters.

Another major project, an overpass near the city’s RTO (Road Transport Office), blew past its March 2025 completion target after encountering land acquisition troubles, court litigation and other hurdles.

In the meantime, its construction zone of cement blocks and half-closed lanes has turned into a traffic hazard, especially during rush hour. Projects that were supposed to solve traffic problems are instead creating new ones because of these delays.


Residents are increasingly questioning why such projects keep dragging on and when the promised relief will finally arrive. Nagpurians are not opposed to development. In fact, they welcome it, but they also expect the timely execution of these plans. As one local media commentary bluntly put it, “development delayed is development denied.”


For ordinary residents of Vidarbha’s largest city, the cumulative impact of these lapses is felt daily on the roads. In many areas, vehicles crawl bumper-to-bumper where new flyovers abruptly narrow or end, and incessant honking has become the norm at rush hour.


At one major junction, the unfinished landing of a flyover has been barricaded off, forcing a long detour through side streets and adding significant time to thousands of daily commutes.

Safety is another concern for commuters.


The lack of proper signage and lane markings on some newly opened flyover stretches has led to risky manoeuvres by drivers, such as sudden U-turns and driving on the wrong side of the road.

With few alternative routes available, people have little choice but to brave these conditions day in and day out. The frustration is palpable as citizens spend extra minutes, sometimes hours, stuck in congestion that the flyovers were supposed to cure.

Nagpur’s experience lays bare the pitfalls of rapid urban infrastructure expansion without adequate planning. For now, the city’s residents have little choice but to navigate the gridlock and live with the inconveniences, hoping that the promised benefits of these projects will eventually materialise.


Until that happens, the city’s proud title of “City of Flyovers” remains tinged with irony, a reminder of unfinished business rather than triumphant progress.


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The NewsDirt is a trusted source for authentic, ground-level journalism, highlighting the daily struggles, public issues, history, and local stories from Vidarbha’s cities, towns, and villages. Committed to amplifying voices often ignored by mainstream media, we bring you reliable, factual, and impactful reporting from Vidarbha’s grassroots.

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