The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has started preliminary work on an Expressway Connector to Samruddhi Mahamarg from Jalna to Nanded (Jalna-Nanded expressway).
Last week, the agency invited Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to select eligible contractors for the construction of the 179.85 km Jalna-Nanded expressway.
The project has an estimated cost of Rs 10,733.2 crore, with a completion period of 30 months and defect liability period of 10 years.
Alignment
The state government has proposed to develop additional connectors or access controlled expressways to connect other major districts to Samruddhi Mahamarg.
Jalna-Nanded Greenfield Expressway is one such connector which will provide a direct and the fastest connectivity for Nanded, Hingoli, Parbhani and Jalna districts to state capital Mumbai and further to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) as well.
The direct connectivity is expected to help reduce time taken to transport goods to international destinations and boost the economy of the rural parts of Nanded, Hingoli, Parbhani and Jalna districts.
The proposed expressway starts at Jalna on the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg and traverses southwest through Jalna, Parbhani and Nanded district and ends on the Nanded-Deglur-Telangana national highway-161.
Unique Features
The six-lane expressway will have a design speed of 120 kmph with a 100 m Right-of-way (RoW).
A unique feature of the expressway will be the provision of a 20 m space for the construction of High-Speed Rail Corridor.
Samruddhi Corridor
Officially named ‘Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg’, the 701-km-long expressway connects Mumbai and Nagpur.
The first phase, connecting Nagpur to the temple town of Shirdi in Ahmednagar district covering a distance of 520 km, has been opened to traffic from December 2022.
The remaining 181-km stretch under Phase-II between Shirdi and Mumbai, will end in Thane’s Vadpe area in the Bhiwandi district, and will be ready by 2024.
The expressway connects 10 districts of the state, namely, Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati, Washim, Buldhana, Jalna, Aurangabad, Nashik, Ahmednagar and Thane.
The project is the brainchild of Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and was conceptualised when he was the chief minister in 2015.
At present, commuters use NH-3 (Mumbai-Dhule) and NH-6 (Dhule-Nagpur) to reach Nagpur, covering a 839 km distance which takes at least 17 hours. The greenfield expressway, once completed, will reduce the travel time between Nagpur and Mumbai to eight hours.
Up till January 2023, about 90 per cent of work is completed on the eight-lane expressway.
