Now reach Nagpur to Pune in just 8 hours; here's how
2 min read 30 Oct 2022, 01:33 PM ISTConsidering the inconvenience to commuters, Union Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on 30 October has said that travel time for commuters travelling from Nagpur to Pune will cut down to eight hours.
PremiumConsidering the inconvenience to commuters, Union Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on 30 October has said that travel time for commuters travelling from Nagpur to Pune will cut down to eight hours.
Giving further details on this, Gadkari said that the Nagpur-Mumbai Samridhi Mahamarg will be connected to the newly proposed Pune-Aurangabad Access Control Green Expressway which will help cover the distance of Nagpur to Pune in eight hours.
Announcing in a tweet, Gadkari wrote, “Nagpur to Pune journey will be possible in eight hours! Considering the inconvenience to commuters currently traveling from Nagpur to Pune, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samridhi Mahamarg will be connected to the newly proposed Pune-Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) Access Control Green Expressway near Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad)."
He further added that the road will be constructed with a completely new alignment by NHAI.
Explaining the route, he said, this will make it possible to travel from Pune to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) in two and half hours and from Nagpur to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) in five and half hours through Samruddhi Mahamarg."
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Currently, to reach Pune from Nagpur, it takes around 14 hours. With the new proposed connectivity, it will cut down the time by around 6 hours.
Meanwhile, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samridhi Mahamarg will be 701 km long, directly connecting ten districts, twenty-six talukas and around 392 villages. It will have a speed limit of 150 km which will bring Nagpur and Mumbai within 8 hours reach. Thus, travel time from Mumbai to Aurangabad will be 4 hours and from Aurangabad to Nagpur, another 4 hours. It will connect several industrial areas, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) , the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC), dry ports of Wardha and Jalna and Mumbai’s JNPT. The expressway was to be inaugurated in May but it got delayed. Some reports state that PM Modi will inaugurate it after Diwali.
The expressway, having a total width of 120m with a central median of 22.5m will follow the international standards of design. There will be 8 lanes, 4 on each side. In case there is a need to increase lanes on either side, a provision has been made in the center of the expressway.
Apart from this, Gadkari had also said that the Central government was planning green express highways between Mumbai and Bengaluru that would cut down the travel time to five hours. Similarly, the green express highways would shorten the travel time between Pune and Bengaluru to 3.5 to 4 hours. The distance between Bengaluru and Mumbai is 981.4 km and currently, the road travel takes around 16-17 hours
On 29 October, Gadkari had sought investments from the Tata Group in and around Nagpur, citing strengths like infrastructure, land availability and connectivity. In a letter to Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran on October 7, Gadkari, who handles the road transport and highways portfolio, said group companies engaged in businesses like steel, auto, consumer products, IT services and aviation can choose to invest in Nagpur.
The letter also comes amid Maharashtra losing several big-ticket projects to neighbouring Gujarat, like the over ₹1.5 lakh crore investment from Foxconn-Vedanta on chip manufacturing and the ₹22,000 crore aircraft manufacturing project where the Tata Group has tied up with Airbus.
