Unfinished Flyovers Keep The City Gridlocked As Execution Fails To Match Approvals

Hyderabad’s traffic troubles continue to deepen as several high-profile flyovers remain incomplete despite rapid approvals and foundation stone ceremonies. Motorists say the city has grown used to new announcements while the ground under their wheels does not move at the same speed.

The situation is so serious that BJP MPs including Etala Rajendar met Union minister Nitin Gadkari to ask him to speed up construction work.

One of the most suffocating choke points is the NH-44 stretch between Suchitra and Kompally, where four flyovers are being built as part of a ₹492-crore upgrade. The corridor was originally slated to open by December last year but timelines shifted again and the April 2026 target now hangs over the entire stretch.

What should have been a straight 10-to-15-minute movement between Jeedimetla and Bowenpally feels like a zig-zag maze of barricades, diversions and dust.

“I would earlier leave my home in Jeedimetla to reach Bowenpally in about 15 minutes. It now takes close to 45 to 50 minutes, the roads and diversions are that bad,” said Harriet Merlin, a student who commutes every afternoon. The stretch has been dug up in phases and partly elevated, with only some sections receiving bitumen and concrete treatment while others remain rubble-lined.

Desperate motorists last week held a protest at Suchitra, demanding that the work be completed quickly.

On the eastern side of the city, the 6.2-km Uppal-Narapally elevated corridor is still under construction eight years after it was taken up. Roads and buildings minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy has promised completion by Dasara 2026 and has issued fresh instructions to officials of the department, the Union ministry of road transport and highways and the executing agency to keep the new timeline.

Local officials told DC that the project has seen a change of contractor earlier in the year after repeated delays.

The ground-level carriageway on the Uppal-Warangal stretch now carries aggressive night-shift paving, but every improvement arrives with a new bottleneck. Meera Kumari, who runs small snacks shop near Uppal Junction, said, “They laid the pillars, but the entry ramps are still barricaded. We deal with open pits, dust and slow traffic every evening.”

The 2.58-kilometre flyover from Nalgonda crossroads to Owaisi Junction, estimated at ₹620 crore under the Strategic Road Development Plan, is behind schedule. GHMC commissioner R V Karnan, during an inspection, directed engineers to complete pending land acquisition and stick to the March 2026 target, describing it as “pivotal for easing traffic congestion and enhancing connectivity” on the stretch from the government printing press in Chanchalguda to Yadagiri Theatre through Saidabad and I S Sadan.

The road is now a tunnel of steel mesh and drums for most of the day. Barricades shift depending on piling work and motorists weave around concrete bases. A commuter Snehal M., from IS Sadan, said she often slows down while travelling in the pre-dawn hours because “the direction changes every week and you don’t know which side is open.”

On the western side, the Miyapur crossroad to Allwyn crossroad link is the newest addition to the list. GHMC has initiated a ₹530 crore package under Hyderabad City Innovative and Transformative Infrastructure to build a six-lane bidirectional flyover and two underpasses across Hafeezpet, Miyapur and Bachupally.

Tender notices show the project is being taken up on an engineering, procurement and construction basis, with GHMC as the agency and the main contractor still under selection. The site meanwhile carries only barricades and soil piles. Karunesh Bhadra, a tech-park employee who travels through the junction at 7 pm, said, “They say build the corridor for IT. For us it’s five years of potholes. The boards went up first but the road is the same.”

The HCITI initiative itself illustrates the larger problem. It cleared 38 works including 19 flyovers, widening packages and underpasses with a proposed outlay of about ₹7,032 crore. Yet the bulk of the works remain in blueprints, project briefs or occasional site visits. In the absence of clear public milestones, motorists speak of a city that moves on announcements. “Foundation stones have been laid, but the road still ends where it began,” said Najma Khan, a commuter from Suchitra Junction who crosses the NH-44 corridor twice a day.

Urban planners and activists say the pattern has repeated across administrations. Approvals and stone-laying move quickly, but the phases of land acquisition, utility shifting, fund release and contractor finalisation drag without transparent public updates. “The city keeps creating photo opportunities at the beginning of projects instead of certainty at the end of them,” said activist and urban planning researcher Radhika Verma. “Until that sequence is reversed and contracts, land and money are fully tied up before works begin, Hyderabad’s incomplete flyovers will continue to sit above the very traffic they were meant to clear.”