The Centre has approved the Karnataka Government’s ₹3,000-crore proposal to convert the Bangalore-Mysore road into a six-lane national highway.
The Centre has also accorded National Highway (NH) status and has numbered it ‘NH 275’. “The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has agreed to fund the entire project and collect toll. The State’s role is only to co-ordinate and facilitate land acquisition,” HC Mahadevappa, Karnataka Minister for Public Works, told BusinessLine .
DBFOT model“Of the ₹3,000 crore, ₹1100 crore is reserved for land acquisition, ₹1,600 for construction and ₹300 crore for shifting utilities,” he added.
The 123-km six-lane highway includes service roads. The project is being taken up under the design, build, finance, operate, transfer (DBFOT) model and will take two years to complete.
The State government has selected SCON as the consultant to take up survey work. “The survey work is to commence in a week’s time and the consultants have been told to submit its report in two months,” Mahadevappa said. As per initial estimate, about 500 acres of land needs to be acquired for road expansion and building flyovers and underpass. “After assessing by me, farmers need not worry for the acquisition is minimal,” he said.
“Once the report is submitted, then we will prepare a detailed project report (DPR) and send it to the Centre. Work is expected to commence early 2015. We want to take it on priority basis and completed it by 2018,” he added.
As part of the project, along with lane expansion work, flyovers will be built at Bidadi and Srirangapatna, and bypass roads at Ramanagar, Channapatna and Mandya towns.
“Since the road will be converted into a toll road, there will be one under-pass every 500 to 1,000 metres at Maddur for cattle, two-wheelers and goods vehicle movement,” Mahadevappa said.
According to a traffic survey conducted by public works department, traffic volume on the Bangalore-Mysore road touches 70,000 passenger car units (PCUs) during weekends and holidays and 40,000 PCUs during weekdays.