GHAZIABAD: National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has hinted that four packages of the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, from Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) near Khekra to the Saharanpur bypass, are ready for opening. It will most likely be inaugurated in the first week of April.“Uttarakhand chief secretary has recently reviewed the project. We are given to understand that the corridor will be inaugurated in the first week of April. The inaugural ceremony will be held at the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, and preparations for it are already underway,” said an NHAI official involved with the project.The corridor, a mix of brownfield and greenfield, will reduce the distance between Delhi and Dehradun from 235 km to 212 km, and commuters through this access-controlled expressway will cover the distance in a little over two hours, compared to four or five hours now. The route begins in Akshardham, Delhi, and passes through Baghpat, Baraut, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, and Saharanpur in UP.The maximum permissible speed on the corridor will be 100 km per hour for cars and 80 km per hour for trucks.There are four toll plazas on the corridor and a person driving a car with a FASTag annual pass can complete the trip in Rs 60. For those without the annual past, the cost would be around Rs 500. “The two packages from Akshardham (Delhi) to the UP border near Loni and UP Gate (Loni, Ghaziabad) to Khekra (near EPE, Baghpat), though not officially inaugurated, have been opened for a trial run since Jan this year,” said the official.The official inauguration date, however, will be declared by the ministry of road transport and highways after consultation with the PMO. But even then, vehicles are plying on the stretch, and in approximately one hour, commuters from Akshardham are able to reach Saharanpur bypass.The Dehradun corridor is intended to transform travel between Delhi and Uttarakhand. The corridor is being built in six packages in UP and two in Uttarakhand. The two key packages are 14.8 km from Akshardham (Delhi) to the UP border near Loni, and 16.8 km from UP Gate, Loni, to Khekra near EPE.The remaining four packages are from Khekra to Lohadda village (27 km), from Lohadda village to Karaunda Mahajan village (30 km), from Karaunda Mahajan village to Khyawari village (26 km), and from Khyawari village to Latifpur village on the Saharanpur bypass (37 km).In Uttarakhand, a 20 km stretch passes through the eco-sensitive zone of Rajaji National Park, where Asia’s longest elevated wildlife corridor of 12 km has been constructed. This includes a 340 m Daat Kali tunnel on the outskirts of Dehradun. Only 4.6 km of the stretch in Uttarakhand is brownfield; the rest is greenfield. National Board for Wildlife imposed restrictions on construction between sunset and sunrise on the stretch passing through the National Park, leading to delays.The expressway, being developed at an estimated cost of Rs 11,970 crore, is a mix of brownfield and greenfield projects and was approved for construction in 2020 under the Bharatmala Pariyojana.A TOI report published in Jan mentions that the new six-lane highway offers much better ride quality than that on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway and the EPE. The highways authority has given greater emphasis to laying the road ahead of the last monsoon, allowing it to settle down, instead of rushing ahead with the inauguration.
