Nagpur: Good news!! Travellers from Nagpur will be able to reach Pune in 8 hours, via a new proposed Expressway connecting Pune to the 701-km Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg.
The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has announced a new Expressway to curtail travel time between Nagpur and Pune to eight hours. The proposed 268 km long expressway will connect to Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg and reduce the travel time between Pune and Nagpur via Ahmednagar and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Aurangabad).
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Wednesday 06 Nov. 2024
Gadkari made the announcement through a series of tweets on Sunday. “Considering the inconvenience to commuters currently travelling from Nagpur to Pune, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg will be connected to the newly proposed Pune-Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Aurangabad) access-controlled expressway. This road will be constructed with a completely new alignment by National Highways Authority of India. This will make it possible to travel from Pune to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar in two-and-a-half hours, and from Nagpur to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar in five-and-a-half hours through Samruddhi Mahamarg,” he tweeted.
While travelling to Pune from Nagpur (800km), currently all private buses, tour operators and vehicles take the Amravati-Karanja (Lad)-Sindkhed Raja-Jalna-Aurangabad-Ahmednagar-Pune route. Due to the lack of an elevated expressway and bad roads in patches, and many villages, it takes 16 hours to reach Pune.
As per the details shared with media by Gadkari’s office, the project has been proposed considering the surge-pricing methods adopted by travel operators during festive/rush season on Nagpur-Pune route and inconvenience suffered by the commuters due to it. Besides, the road connectivity through the existing Pune-Ahmednagar- Aurangabad Highway is overloaded with local and industrial traffic. The proposed alignment provides connectivity from South India (Goa, Bengaluru, and other districts of Karnataka via Pune-Bangalore Expressway) to Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur, and further to Madhya Pradesh and Northern India.
The proposed alignment is 268 km long including 39 km length of the proposed ring road around Pune city. Also, it has a 20 km length spur — 12 km to Ranjandgaon and 8 km to Bidkin-Shendra. In the proposed alignment, a spur is proposed to connect to the existing Pune-Ahmednagar Highway at the end point of the proposed elevated structure on the existing highway. Also, this may be explored as another alignment option.
The starting point of the proposed expressway is Pune-Bengaluru Highway (intersection with proposed Pune ring road), and its end point is Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway. It covers Pune, Ahmednagar, Beed, and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Aurangabad) and connects Pune-Bengaluru Expressway to Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway at Aurangabad, which further provides connectivity to Nagpur. It will be a six-lane access-controlled (greenfield) project expandable to eight-lane road.
The designed speed is 120 km per hour, with a designed life of 20 years. It is touted to be the most economic and fast Freight Corridor with 120 km per hour speed between Pune and Aurangabad, and its passing through undeveloped areas will boost economic development there.
As per the recent announcement by Eknath Shinde, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway will be opened soon for traffic from Nagpur to Shirdi. The distance from Nagpur to Aurangabad is 410 km, and further Samruddhi Mahamarg will be connected to Aurangabad-Pune Expressway with a distance of 268 km, in the new scheme. Considering these stretches, the travel time for a total length of 678 kms from Nagpur to Pune can be covered in eight hours.
