New Delhi: Every morning Satpal Dogra, an MNC executive, spends 45 minutes to an hour negotiating traffic on the packed ITO bridge to reach his office in Okhla. His struggle is shared by thousands of officer-goers from east Delhi who work in the business centres of central and south Delhi.

The increasing population of the trans-Yamuna area along with Ghaziabad and Noida has put unforeseen pressure on the bridges over Yamuna - hardly surprising given the fact that there are only 12 bridges over the 22km stretch of Yamuna along Delhi.

Compare that with the 33 bridges on the 20km course of the Thames along London and the contrast is stark.

It is only now that there is talk of building more bridges to bring the average to one bridge for every 1.5 Km of the river.

Urban transport experts maintain bridges over the Yamuna have typically been a case of too few and too far apart so that even when new bridges have happened, the advantage was quickly lost because of the burgeoning traffic.

From five bridges (and two railway bridges) over the river 15 years ago, there are now 12 bridges on the river. The number of railway bridges remains the same.

This despite the fact that way back in the 1970s, then irrigation minister K L Rao had said at an NCR Planning Board (NCRPB) meeting that like the Thames, every 500m of the Yamuna would get a bridge. "The width of Thames is much less compared to that of Yamuna. Construction of more bridges is an expensive proposition here due to a wide flood plain. But as we plan new roads to connect trans-Yamuna areas including Noida and Ghaziabad with the rest of Delhi, we need more bridges and aesthetic ones too," says urban transport planner N Ranganathan.

Delhi’s tryst with "aesthetic" bridges though has not been very happy so far. One of the primary reasons for the inordinate delay in construction of the Signature Bridge at Wazirabad is the plan to make it an emblem of the city which Delhi government found to its dismay, sent the cost skyrocketing, triggering a series of procedural wrangles.

Sources say the plan to construct a bridge between Nizamuddin and DND flyway before the 2010 Commonwealth Games was dropped because of lack of time.

Feasibility studies for two bridges between Wazirabad and ISBT - one parallel to the Wazirabad Bridge and another joining Chandgi Ram Akhara near Majnu ka Tila to Pushta are on. With Kalindi Kunj barrage grappling to cope with the heavy traffic load, the Noida authority is working on building a second bridge.

Transport planners rubbish the idea floated in some quarters that more bridges will only "shift" the congestion to the rest of the city. "Even today, the traffic eventually merges at the arterial roads whether it is Ring Road, Outer Ring Road or Mathura Road," said a senior transport planner working with RITES.

The RITES traffic survey (2008) points out that key arteries such as Nizamuddin and ITO bridges shoulder most of the NCR traffic burden. Nearly 80% of the traffic on the Nizamuddin Bridge in the morning peak hour is from outside Delhi, as is 75% of the ITO traffic in the evening.

The report also indicates how construction of more bridges would help decongest the choked stretches. Except the old Yamuna bridge, the traffic flow has increased on all other links.

It is highest on the DND Flyway where traffic volume has increased to 97,096 vehicles per day in 2007 from just 17,161 in 2001, showing that when new links are built, traffic shifts there.