News: Delhi-Mumbai expressway: Five flyovers planned on Sohna-Firozepur Jhirka stretch-15-04-2021
Delhi-Mumbai expressway: Five flyovers planned on Sohna-Firozepur Jhirka stretch
GURUGRAM: In a few months, the drive between Jaipur and Delhi-NCR could take you down a different route, which is part of the bigger Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.
The first phase of the expressway — from Sohna to Jaipur — after its completion will take some of the traffic load off NH-8, the main Delhi-Gurugram-Jaipur corridor that has become very congested over the years, and help commuters reduce their travel time.
Five flyovers and one cloverleaf will be built on the Sohna-Firozepur Jhirka stretch of the expressway, according to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Also, there will be five other interchanges on this stretch, which will allow commuters to get on to this greenfield expressway and exit.
The Sohna-Jaipur section of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is likely to get completed by the end of this year, a senior NHAI official has said.
According to a senior official, this eight-lane expressway is being developed with a provision to expand it to 12-lane thoroughfare in the future, with a proposed speed of 120 kmph. In addition, a network of 92 wayside amenities has also been planned on either side of the expressways at an interval of 50km from Sohna onwards.
According to the highway authority, nearly 60% work in this section of the expressway, which includes a 79-km stretch in south Haryana between Sohna and Firozepur Jhirka, is complete. The stretch will commence at NH-919 from Bhirawati village in Sohna and end at Kolgaon in Ferozepur Jhirka.
“The wayside amenities will include commercial facilities such as motels, dormitories for truck drivers and hotels for car and bus passengers. Also, this section of the expressway will have fuel stations and restaurants to ensure a comfortable ride for passengers and freight movement,” the NHAI official said.
The 79km stretch between Sohna and Firozepur Jhirka is divided into three packages and construction work has been allotted to three different firms. “In reality, the high-speed corridor in Haryana will begin from Rajiv Chowk and is being built on the existing alignment up to the Sohna bypass, and from there it will be known as the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway,” the official said.
The highway authority is also building an elevated section on Sohna Road. “The entire stretch from Rajiv Chowk to Sohna will have a six-lane access-controlled road so that commuters do not have to stop anywhere along the entire route — from Dhaula Kuan to Jaipur. Besides this, the expressway will help commuters save fuel considerably and provide better ride and more safety than the existing NH-8,” he said.
Around three lakh vehicles take NH-8 daily. This is one of the reasons behind traffic congestion on this stretch. The new link will decongest the highway and help tackle traffic bottlenecks in Delhi. The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway project will also reduce the distance between the two metros from 1,450km by road via NH-8 to approximately 1,250 km.
The expressway with closed tolling will connect five states — Haryana (79 km), Rajasthan (380 km), Madhya Pradesh (370 km), Gujarat (300 km) and Maharashtra (120 km). The 844km Sohna-Vadodara section is at a more advanced stage of construction compared to others. According to the senior NHAI official, alignment of the stretch through districts with less urbanised areas, digitisation of revenue records for designing the road and accurate land acquisition process helped the authority expedite the work on the flagship expressway project.
