NEW DELHI: After years of waiting, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has floated tenders for a 14-lane road on the critical section of NH-24—from Nizamuddin Bridge to Dasna(28km)—a move which is expected to ease massive congestion on the stretch. The 22-km stretch of the Dasna-Hapur portion of the highway would be widened to six lanes.
The six lanes in the center of the Nizamuddin Bridge-Dasna stretch will be an "expressway", with limited entry and exits for seamless movement of long-haul traffic. The other eight lanes—four on each side—would be a normal highway and commuters won't have to pay for using these lanes.
The widening of Nizamuddin Bridge to Dasna corridor gains importance considering the fact that this is one of the most congested highway stretches in the country and the traffic burden has increased abnormally as new residential colonies have come up along this stretch in Ghaziabad. This area has seen rapid development of housing projects in areas including Indirapuram and parts of Noida, largely occupied by people working in Delhi.
There have been several flip-flops regarding the widening of this stretch for over six years. But after road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari personally experienced the traffic nightmare on NH-24, the project was fast-tracked.
"We have divided the entire 49km road into three stretches for faster completion of work. We hope to rollout the project before the end of the year. Bidders awarded contracts will get a maximum of 30 months each to complete construction work," said an NHAI official.
NHAI has invited both technical and financial bids simultaneously with the target to award the project by October. The project will be implemented on "hybrid annuity" model where government takes all the risk including the traffic growth. Since in this model developers are assured of getting back their investment as government will pay in instalments, there is hardly any doubt of the works not attracting bids from private players.
Centre aims to start work on this stretch, which also has political implications in Uttar Pradesh.
NHAI officials said that the Nizamuddin Bridge to Dasna will be part of the Delhi-Meerut expressway. "The stretch on new alignment between Dasna and Meerut will be developed at a later stage. We are trying to address the biggest concern of commuters by taking up the priority stretch. The 14-laning may seem ambitious, but the traffic growth on this stretch is expected to increase further in the next 10 years," a road transport ministry official said.
The six lanes in the center of the Nizamuddin Bridge-Dasna stretch will be an "expressway", with limited entry and exits for seamless movement of long-haul traffic. The other eight lanes—four on each side—would be a normal highway and commuters won't have to pay for using these lanes.
The widening of Nizamuddin Bridge to Dasna corridor gains importance considering the fact that this is one of the most congested highway stretches in the country and the traffic burden has increased abnormally as new residential colonies have come up along this stretch in Ghaziabad. This area has seen rapid development of housing projects in areas including Indirapuram and parts of Noida, largely occupied by people working in Delhi.
There have been several flip-flops regarding the widening of this stretch for over six years. But after road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari personally experienced the traffic nightmare on NH-24, the project was fast-tracked.
"We have divided the entire 49km road into three stretches for faster completion of work. We hope to rollout the project before the end of the year. Bidders awarded contracts will get a maximum of 30 months each to complete construction work," said an NHAI official.
NHAI has invited both technical and financial bids simultaneously with the target to award the project by October. The project will be implemented on "hybrid annuity" model where government takes all the risk including the traffic growth. Since in this model developers are assured of getting back their investment as government will pay in instalments, there is hardly any doubt of the works not attracting bids from private players.
Centre aims to start work on this stretch, which also has political implications in Uttar Pradesh.
NHAI officials said that the Nizamuddin Bridge to Dasna will be part of the Delhi-Meerut expressway. "The stretch on new alignment between Dasna and Meerut will be developed at a later stage. We are trying to address the biggest concern of commuters by taking up the priority stretch. The 14-laning may seem ambitious, but the traffic growth on this stretch is expected to increase further in the next 10 years," a road transport ministry official said.
No comments:
Post a Comment