NEW DELHI: The country’s first 8-lane elevated urban Dwarka expressway, an important part of the 60,000-crore plan to de-congestion Delhi, was recently inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The 29-km-long expressway, which includes tunnels, underpasses, flyovers, and elevated structures, was built for Rs 4,100 crore and is designed to ease congestion on existing NH-48 and offer smoother traffic flow between Delhi and Gurugram.
Of the total length, 18.9 km falls in Haryana, while the remaining 10.1 km is in Delhi. Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highway said that the travel experience between Delhi and Haryana will change because of the new expressway. The travel time between Delhi and Gurugram will be lessened by a minimum of 20 minutes.
The minister said within the next two months, Delhi’s Urban Extension Road-2 (UER-2) would be completed and lessen the traffic towards Dhaula Kuan by 70 percent, and the time for travel from Panipat to Delhi airport would be down to half an hour.
The UER-2 or NH-344M is a 75.7-km-long, 6-lane expressway in Delhi-NCR. It begins from NH-44 at Alipur, passes Rohini, Mundka, Najafgarh, and Dwarka, and ends at the Delhi–Gurgaon Expressway on NH-48 near Mahipalpur.
Gadkari said the project was also environmentally friendly since 30,000 tons of waste were used in the construction.
In Delhi, the 10.1 km-long expressway connects to Basai in Haryana. It has an 8-lane main carriageway and an 8.6-km-long elevated section, with features like footpaths, subways, cycle tracks, four vehicular underpasses, rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge facilities, traffic signal-free lanes as well as an elevated service road at five major junctions.
The section also features one of the widest railway-over-bridges, with 16 lanes, and one of the longest bow spring steel bridges, at 125 meters. On March 9, 2019, the Union ministers, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, and Nitin Gadkari, laid the foundation stone for the Dwarka Expressway.
