On the road, but going nowhere

Though Delhi has India's most expansive road network, the city's sprawling streets have remained arenas of constant struggle for its 21mn residents

- Snehil Sinha and Karn Pratap Singh

Most often, a city's biggest bugbears affect neighborhoods and regions differently. Delhi, which has its fair share of problems, is no different. For instance, water or electricity supply are problems in some areas, but not in others. Street crime is high in some parts of the city, but less in others. But, there's one problem that unites Delhi residents like no other, one that's impossible to ignore or evade-traffic.

The city's streets, sprawling and well-connected, have become a battleground of frustration and despair. The roads are arenas of constant struggle, where over 21 million residents-across age, class, and creed-find themselves stuck in an unrelenting dance of congestion. In the heart of India's Capital, the promise of smooth mobility has faded, and has been crushed under the weight of countless vehicles and official inaction.

The illusion of infrastructure

Delhi's road network, on paper, puts most other larger cities in India to shame. A radial design, converging at the Ring Road, seamlessly connects satellite towns Gurugram, Noida, and Ghaziabad to the Capital. Over 18,594km of expressways and highways stitch the National Capital Region (NCR) into one of the country's most integrated systems.

The total road length in Delhi is, in fact, more than double that of any other Indian town. The city's total road network is 33,198km, with Bengaluru, which has a road length of 14,000km, a distant second. It is followed by Kolkata with 4,018km, Hyderabad with 3,349km, Chennai with 2,780km and Mumbai with 1,941km, as of 2023.

But beneath Delhi's infrastructural sheen lies a bitter truth: the roads are bursting at the seams.

According to the government portal Parivahan, Delhi had nearly eight million registered vehicles in 2023-one for every two registered voters.