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The government today said it has approved building over 1,000 kilometre of expressways under its flagship road building programme NHDP, entailing an investment of Rs 16,680 crore.
The projects include 400 km long Vadodara-Mumbai, 66 km long Delhi-Meerut, 334 km long Bangalore-Chennai, and 277 km Kolkata-Dhanbad expressways.
“The construction of 1,000 kms of expressways under the Public Private Partnership (NHDP) Phase-VI through Public Private Partnership (PPP) at a total cost of Rs 16,680 crore has been approved by the Union Government,” the Road Transport and Highways Ministry said in a statement.
In addition, there is a proposal to develop the National Expressway II — Eastern Peripheral Expressway — connecting NH-1 near Kundli and terminating on NH-2 near Palwal.
“The proposal to establish the Expressways Authority of India (EAI) on the pattern of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been there at the discussion stage which has not culminated in any concrete shape,” the statement said.
The government has earlier announced plans to set up EAI to facilitate building of over 18,000 km of roads catering to high-speed traffic at a cost of about Rs 4,50,000 crore.
As far as Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway is concerned, it said preparation of a detailed project report (DPR) for the entire project is under progress and implementation of the project on public-private-partnership mode will be initiated after DPR.
Feasibility study of the Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway was to be completed by October 2009. However, there were delays as in course of feasibility study additional length of about 94 km had to be added for connectivity between NH-4 and JNPT within outer Mumbai region in Maharashtra.
About Delhi-Meerut Expressway it said, “Feasibility study of this project which also includes 6-laning of Dasna-Hapur section of NH-24 and 6-laning of Delhi to Meerut is in progress.”
Bangalore-Chennai feasibility study is being carried out, it said. “The alignment of the expressway has been finalised.
The approval from the State Government of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu has been obtained.”
On Kolkata-Dhanbad Expressway, the statement said that initially the response of bidders to the project was not very encouraging, with only single bid received and the project had to be restructured. The DPR is in progress, it added.
It had plans to build 18,637 km of expressways in three phases by 2022.
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