New Delhi to Ban Some Bicycle Rickshaws

NEW DELHI – Bicycle rickshaws will be banned to clear traffic congestion in the heart of New Delhi’s old city, authorities said Wednesday.

Electric buses will provide alternate transportation in the city’s famed Chandi Chowk market, the city told a New Delhi court that had ordered the ban. The ban goes into effect Sept. 18.

The rickshaws and the rickshaw-wallahs, or drivers, make up a central part of the atmosphere along the market’s main road. They ferry people to the small lanes where vendors sell everything from aromatic spices and brightly colored cloth to dazzling diamonds.

However, the multitude of the slow moving cycles together with wagons hauling goods, beggars lining the roads, vending carts selling drinks and tobacco and thousands of pedestrians have made the roads virtually impassable for other vehicles.