GURUGRAM: The National Highways Authority of India has issued in-principle approval for DLF to build a flyover along the NH-8 service road from the Ambience Mall side toward Cyber City and a right-turn underpass from Moulsari Avenue toward Delhi under the Delhi-Gurugram Expressway, officials said after the letter was circulated over the weekend.
The twin works are meant to ease the daily crush between Sirhaul toll and Shankar Chowk, where Cyber City-bound traffic, Udyog Vihar feeders and DLF Phase 3 vehicles stack against through movement on the expressway. NHAI has said DLF will carry full financial and execution responsibility, including planning, design, approvals, construction, utility shifting, any land acquisition and later operation and maintenance, with no financial liability on the highway authority.
Project briefings describe a three-lane elevated stretch running parallel to the existing highway flyover and above the service road on the Delhi-to-Jaipur side, plus a three-lane underpass so Moulsari Avenue traffic can join Delhi-bound lanes without looping through the Cyber City U-turn that currently feeds Shankar Chowk. Exact length and ramp geometry will firm up only after detailed engineering drawings clear NHAI scrutiny.
Cost estimates in circulation sit around Rs 130 crore to Rs 140 crore, according to a senior DLF official who did not wish to be named. Some earlier briefings have floated higher figures near Rs 300 crore. Until designs and bill of quantities lock, the conservative attributed range is the safer reading for readers. DLF must also deposit prescribed NHAI charges and performance bank guarantees under applicable policy.
GMDA had earlier nodded to both structures. That civic clearance does not replace the NHAI design gate. The highway authority has told the developer that any loss of service-road lane width caused by the elevated deck must be compensated with equivalent at-grade carriageway so overall corridor capacity does not shrink during or after construction.
Commuters who exit Ambience Mall toward Cyber City today weave across the same service-road conflicts the flyover is meant to lift. Vehicles coming out of the existing U-turn underpass compete with through traffic headed to Udyog Vihar and Sikanderpur. Segregating those streams is the core traffic argument NHAI accepted in principle, not a promise that every signal on Golf Course Road will clear.
DLF's Downtown and mall-side development adds its own peak loads to the belt. Builder-funded public works of this scale are unusual on a national highway service road in north India, which is why NHAI spelled out bank guarantees, fee deposits and capacity-neutral service lanes in the approval language rather than treating the plan as a routine municipal flyover.
What still stands between approval and pier work
NHAI has asked for detailed engineering drawings, design calculations, traffic studies, structural designs, drainage arrangements and road-safety measures from a competent agency before any construction start. A stage-wise traffic management plan will need traffic-police clearance as well. Soil investigation on the live service road has already drawn enforcement attention earlier this season when bore work drifted beyond permitted zones, a reminder that utility maps under this belt are dense.
For office buses and private cars that lose 20 to 40 minutes between Sirhaul and Shankar Chowk on weekday evenings, the approval is planning certainty, not overnight free flow. Pier and underpass work on a live expressway service road will itself force diversions. Residents and mall traffic around Ambience Mall, Leela Ambience and the Downtown belt should watch for barricade notices once drawings are approved.
The corridor story sits alongside other grade-separation pushes already tracked on Dalimss, including the GMDA Southern Peripheral Road elevated tender near Vatika Chowk (https://dalimss.news/articles/gmda-spr-elevated-tender-776-crore) and the separate Hero Honda Chowk to Umang Bhardwaj Chowk elevated-road clearance (https://dalimss.news/articles/haryana-approves-elevated-road-hero-honda-umang). Mixing those headlines with the Ambience-Cyber City package confuses three different stretches.
Cyber City Metro and Rapid Metro access patterns also shape how people exit Moulsari Avenue today. Civil progress on Phase 2 Metro packages toward the Cyber City belt (https://dalimss.news/articles/haryana-clears-phase2-metro-civil-cyber-city) will eventually change last-mile choice, but the NHAI letter is specifically about highway service-road grade separation funded by the private developer.
Readers should treat the in-principle letter as the start of a design and compliance clock, not as a commissioning date. Until NHAI stamps drawings and traffic police clear diversion plans, the Sirhaul-Shankar Chowk crawl remains the lived reality. Official updates on highway works sit on https://nhai.gov.in/, with city-level coordination notes through https://gmda.gov.in/ and https://gurugram.gov.in/.
What is firm now is the funding model (DLF at its own cost), the two-structure brief (service-road flyover plus Moulsari right-turn underpass), the earlier GMDA nod, and NHAI's insistence on capacity-neutral service roads and full design packages before build. Everything else, including final cost, pier locations and diversion calendars, waits on those drawings.
Utility shifting under the service road will decide how long diversions last. Gas, optical fibre, water and sewer lines pack the Ambience-Cyber City edge. Any design that skips ground-penetrating surveys before pier piles risks the same class of underground failures the city has already seen near other expressway junctions this year.
