Delhi-Mumbai Expressway "EMPOWER IAS"

In news:

• The Minister for Road Transport and Highways Union Minister Nitin Gadkari concluded the review of the work progress on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.

 

Delhi-Mumbai Expressway

• The ambitious infra project started in the year 2018 is being constructed at a cost of Rs 98,000 crore and is scheduled for completion by March 2023.
•  Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra
• Once ready, the expressway will feature a spur to Noida International Airport and Jawaharlal Nehru Port to Mumbai through a spur in the financial capital.
• It will reduce travel time between certain cities to 12-12.5 hours from 24 hours.
• The project is expected to improve connectivity to economic hubs of India like Jaipur, Ajmer, Kishangarh, Chittorgarh, Kota, Udaipur, Ujjain, Bhopal, Indore, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, and Surat.

Key features of the expressway

• The expressway which is eight-lane access-controlled can be expanded to a 12-lane expressway depending on the traffic volume
• It will boast wayside amenities such as resorts, food courts, restaurants, fuel stations, logistics parks, facilities for truckers
• For accident victims, it will offer a helicopter ambulance service as well as a heliport, which will use drone services for business
• Along the highway, over two million trees and shrubs are planned to be planted
• The highway project is Asia’s first and the world’s second to include animal overpasses in order to facilitate unrestricted wildlife movement
• Besides, it will also involve two iconic eight-lane tunnels
• The project will result in annual savings of more than 320 million litres of fuel as well as reduce Carbon dioxide emissions by 850 million kg
• Over 12 lakh tonnes of steel will be consumed in the project’s construction, which is equivalent to constructing 50 Howrah bridges
• For the project, 80 lakh tonnes of cement will be consumed, which is around 2 percent of the country’s annual cement production capacity
• The ambitious Delhi-Mumbai Expressway project has also created job opportunities for thousands of trained civil engineers apart from generating over 50 lakh man-days of work