Union Road Transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said the detailed project report (DPR) for the JNPT-Shivare section of the proposed expressway parallel to the Mumbai-Pune highway was ready and work on the stretch would start in a month.
“The proposed Mumbai-Pune-Bengaluru expressway will help reduce the travel time between Mumbai and Bengaluru to eight hours. It will also bring down the travel time between Pune and Mumbai to one-and-a-half hours,” Gadkari said, while speaking at the foundation-laying ceremony to upgrade the Dahiwadi-Mayni-Vita stretch of NH-160, which would cost Rs 632 crore. The function was held at Vita in Sangli district.
The work on the JNPT-Shivare section would cost Rs 10,000 crore. “The parallel road between Mumbai and Pune will start from the Atal Setu and connect to Pune’s ring road. The expressway will pass 360km in Maharashtra and 496km in Karnataka. Atal Setu to Pune travel time will be around one and a half hours, while it will take nearly five hours to travel from Pune to Bengaluru. The expressway passes along the drought-prone areas of the region and will help propel economic growth in the region. We have proposed aircraft landing at five sites along the expressway. The total length of the expressway is 800km and the speed limit will be 120km per hour,” Gadkari said.
The minister said when he was the Maharashtra irrigation minister, he gave importance to the irrigation schemes, which helped the people to grow cash crops like sugar cane and improve their economic standing.
“The Pune-Bengaluru highway brought economic prosperity to cities like Satara and Kolhapur.
Similarly, the new expressway passing through Raigad, Pune, Satara and Sangli district’s rural areas will help bring economic prosperity to these regions,” Gadkari said.
Gadkari inspected the construction work of the Sangli-Kolhapur stretch of NH166 (Nagpur-Ratnagiri Highway) and the Kagal-Satara (part of NH48) six-laning work in a helicopter.