NEW DELHI: Work on six major road infrastructure projects, including three corridors connecting Urban Extension Road II (UER II) with the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway and Delhi-Katra Expressway, aimed at easing chronic traffic congestion across the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), will begin between October this year and April next year, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari announced on Tuesday.
The announcement came after Gadkari reviewed the progress of the six-lane access-controlled highway linking Ring Road-Maharani Bagh with the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.
The highway will also provide seamless connectivity to the Noida International Airport at Jewar and the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway. As this newspaper reported earlier, the project is almost complete and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to inaugurate the stretch soon.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Union ministers Ajay Tamta, Harsh Malhotra and Krishan Pal Gurjar, along with ministers from Delhi and Haryana, attended the review meeting. Gadkari said three major state highways in the national capital, recently taken over by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), would be redeveloped into six-lane signal-free express connectors, with construction likely to commence in December. The stretches include Ashram to Badarpur, Punjabi Bagh to Tikri Border, and Vasant Kunj to Faridabad.
The minister said that two-lane secondary service roads on both sides of UER II, estimated to cost `6,400 crore, are proposed to improve access to residential areas and commercial centres.
UER II, designated as NH-344M, is a 75.7-km six-lane access-controlled expressway serving as the capital’s third Ring Road. It starts at Alipur, passes through Rohini, Mundka, Najafgarh and Dwarka, and culminates near Mahipalpur at the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. Gadkari announced that inert material from sanitary landfill sites would be used instead of soil in all Delhi road projects.
