Mumbai to Bengaluru in five hours? Nitin Gadkari promises a new expressway

Currently, it takes at least three times as much time to cover the distance between India’s business capital and IT capital if you choose to travel by car.

You may soon prefer traveling by car from Mumbai to Bengaluru rather than taking a train or plane. Union minister Nitin Gadkari has promised that it will not take more than five hours to cover the distance between the two cities when the green expressway comes up. The Union Minister promised that the new expressway is planned and will be handed over in the near future. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), under its ambitious national road network project, is expected to take up the work.

Gadkari, speaking at an event on Monday, said, “We are planning a green expressway between Mumbai and Bangalore. It will be a five-hour journey between Mumbai-Bangalore and 3.5 to 4 hours between Pune and Bangalore.” The Green Expressway, which is currently in the planning stages, is also likely to connect the Mumbai-Pune Expressway through the Ring Road.

The distance between the business capital of India and the IT capital is 985 km. Both the cities are connected via National Highway 48 or National Highway 50. Currently, it takes more than 15 hours to cover the distance between Mumbai and Bengaluru by road. The new green expressway will cut travel time by a third.

The upcoming Green Expressway will add a series of high-speed expressways connecting multiple cities across India. In recent times, highways such as the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and the Purvanchal Expressway have significantly reduced travel time for those who prefer to travel by car.

Gadkari assured that more such highways will come up by the end of this year. “By the end of this year, there will be highways connecting Delhi-Dehradun in 2 hours, Delhi-Hardwar in 2 hours, Delhi-Jaipur in 2 hours, Delhi-Chandigarh in 2.5 hours, Delhi-Amritsar in 4 hours, Delhi -Srinagar in 8 hours, Delhi-Katra in 6 hours, Delhi-Mumbai in 10 hours, Chennai-Bangalore in 2 hours and Lucknow-Kanpur in half an hour,” Gadkari said.

Recently, a Union minister said that his ministry plans to take control of high-traffic state highways in the next 25 years to transform them. He said his department would help those highways by adding four to six lanes to improve traffic flow.

Date of first publication: 18 Oct 2022 09:24 IST