Jitendra Kumar’s phone buzzes with a new ride request. Before accepting it, the 27-year-old app-based bike taxi driver. checks where the passenger is waiting.

If the pickup point is on the other side of Gaur Chowk, one of the busiest intersections in the National Capital Region, he has a decision to make.

At times, he calls the customer and asks them to cross the road instead. Some agree. Others insist: “Yahin par aao (come here)”.

Then Jitendra looks at the traffic.

For Jitendra, crossing a distance of barely two kilometres through Gaur Chowk can take an hour. “So we see the traffic jam, and we refuse to go,” he said.

For commuters like Jitendra, an eight-lane underpass being constructed beneath Gaur Chowk has promised an escape from the daily gridlock. But that relief will take longer to arrive.

The 700-metre underpass, being built parallel to the Taj Highway to connect Surajpur in Greater Noida with Gaur City, was expected to open by mid-August. Officials now say the opening has been pushed to late October, close to Diwali.

The delay has added to the frustration of commuters who pass through an intersection that handles about one lakh vehicles every day. The underpass is expected to bring the biggest relief to residents of Greater Noida West, particularly those travelling between Gaur City and Surajpur, while also easing the flow of vehicles coming from Noida, Ghaziabad and the Delhi-Meerut Expressway that converge at Gaur Chowk.

Key residential pockets likely to benefit include Gaur City and Gaur City 2, Sector 1, Sector 4, Cherry County, Nirala Estate, ACE City, and Panchsheel Greens, along with other housing societies spread across the Greater Noida West corridor.

The Rs 82-crore project is about 90 percent complete, according to officials at the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority, or GNIDA. But a shortage of bitumen, disruptions to supply chains linked to the conflict in West Asia, underground utility lines and the difficulty of working amid constant traffic have slowed construction, officials said.

“The shortage was felt around April,” a senior GNIDA official said, adding that procurement times increased to as long as 15 days while prices also rose.

Traffic, meanwhile, has created another problem: there is rarely enough space or time to carry out construction.

The project began in 2024, and workers had to navigate underground electricity, gas and sewage lines, according to another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Even if a small network was disturbed, it could have affected lakhs of residents nearby,” the official said. A damaged line, he added, could have left residents without essential services for days.

The official flagged that because of the volume of vehicles, construction had to be carried out in small stretches. The most productive hours, the official said, are between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., when traffic thins.

On Friday afternoon, the consequences of that congestion were visible. School buses crawled through the intersection after classes ended, their windscreens coated in dust from the broken and excavated roads.

For drivers like Jitendra, who receive ride requests from across the NCR – including Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Jewar – the underpass could mean more than a faster commute.

Less time in traffic, he said, could mean more rides. “It will save me time, and I can take more rides,” he said.

Across the road, beneath a foot overbridge, Rhaees, 28, described a similar calculation.

An air-conditioner repair technician, he leaves his home in Pratap Vihar in Ghaziabad at 8 each morning. Reaching his office in Surajpur takes about two hours, he said, although the journey should take around 45 minutes.

And the commute is only the beginning of his day. His work takes him across the NCR, and he said he often leaves 20 minutes early for service calls simply to account for the possibility of getting stuck at Gaur Chowk.

“Some customers understand,” he said. “But every time I can’t be late.”

When he receives a request that requires him to cross the intersection, he said, he hopes there is another route.

The congestion becomes worse during the monsoon, he added, when rain and the continuing construction turn the area into an even more difficult bottleneck.

Officials say they do not want to open the underpass until it has been fully tested.

During the rains, they found damage at one location and began repairs, an official said. Of the underpass’s 700 metres, 560 metres were initially covered by a canopy. The remaining 160 metres are now also being covered to prevent water from accumulating.

The project was also reviewed by IIT Roorkee, the official said, and the report was found to be satisfactory. After the bitumen work, officials say, the remaining tasks include installing lights and painting the underpass.  If the revised schedule holds, the project could open by late October.