The newly minted ITO Skywalk, a foot over-bridge in New Delhi, connecting four principal streets offers a ground-breaking solution to decongest and facilitate safe and seamless pedestrian flow amidst the heart of the city. Roughly 535m long, it spans across Sikandra Road, Mathura Road, Tilak Marg, and Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, while catering to the ITO as well as PragatiMaidan Metro stations.
Being Delhi’s longest skywalk, this integrates numerous nodes in one of the busiest stretches of the metropolis, that sees office goers commute to various corporate and government buildings in the vicinity such as the ITO, Police Headquarters, PWD Headquarters, GST Office, Supreme Court, DDA VikasMinar, Lady Irwin College amongst others.
The project defies the solidity of the surroundings and is conceived as a serpentine tube, coiling around major intersections. The program called for a unified response to the area’s burgeoning commuter concerns, especially at the ITO Crossing and the ‘W’ Point Junction, which sees maximum pedestrian traffic throughout the day. A network of public transport systems including the two metro stations, Tilak Bridge railway station, and various DTC bus stops are major hubs that mobilize traffic flow in the area, especially during rush hour. The design paradigm traced this flow and came up with a safety mechanism in the form of a skywalk at ‘W’ point and a foot over-bridge at Hans Bhawan.