In recent times, infrastructure has seen leaps and bounds of development, and one primary area is road connectivity. The government has improved roads all over India as road transport is still a key connectivity method.
A few such examples are the newly-opened Bangalore-Mysore expressway that has reduced the travel between the two cities drastically and the recently inaugurated Delhi-Mumbai expressway, the longest highway in India. Here are five things to know about the new highway.
The beginning and the end
The new Delhi-Mumbai expressway, as the name suggests, connects the national capital and the nation’s financial capital, Mumbai. The highway starts at DND Flyway in Delhi and to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Maharashtra. The highway passes through Dausa, Kota, Vadodara and Surat.
The longest highway
The total length of the highway spans 1,350km long. The highway passes through Delhi (12km), Haryana (129km), Rajasthan (373km), Madhya Pradesh (244km), Gujarat (429km), and Maharashtra (171km). Adding all this to DND–Faridabad–KMP (59km) and Virar–JNPT (92km), the total length of the new Delhi-Mumbai expressway adds up to 1,350km.
Travel time halved
Without the expressway, travel time between Delhi and Mumbai takes 24 hours. Now, with the highway complete, the time it takes to travel between the two cities has reduced to 12 hours. This means road transport can deliver goods in a day between the two cities and the goods carried can also increase in terms of quantity.
8-lanes with the scope of expansion
The new expressway between Delhi and Mumbai spans 8 lanes and can be expanded to 12 lanes. The land for these additional lanes will be reserved, along with space for utilities, tree plantation, and amenities. Speaking of which, the highway will have 93 wayside amenities such as ATMs, retail shops, food courts, EV charging stations, and fuel pumps.
Also, the Delhi-Mumbai expressway will be the first highway in India to have helipads and fully-equipped trauma centres every 100km apart.
Construction
The foundation stone for the Delhi-Mumbai expressway was laid in 2019 by union minister Nitin Gadkari. With the project valued at Rs 1,00,000 crore, the construction was divided into 4 sections with a total of 52 construction packages with each package measuring between 8 and 46km.
