New Delhi, August 1, 2020 : Government of India is developing Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Greenfield Expressway which will reduce time to travel between Chandigarh and Amritsar to Chandigarh to Delhi only 2 hours as compared to present time of around 5 hours.
According to details prepared by the Modi Government’s agency National Highway of India (NHA), this Greenfield Expressway will be of 670 kms length. This will also provide connectivity to Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Gurdaspur and Jammu.
NHAI is already constructing access controlled Ismailabad-Jind-Narnaul NH-152D. DPR has also been started for making existing Ismailabad-Ambala section access controlled and developing greenfield Ambala-Chandigarh access controlled highway. With this the travel time from Delhi Airport to Chandigarh Aiport [via UER-II, Delhi-Katra Expressway, will reduce to 2 hrs.
Plan prepared by NHAI :
To improve the connectivity to major economic and tourist centres in the State of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, a greenfield alignment has now been proposed to connect Expressway from Ludhiana with Ropar (85 kms.). The stretch from Ropar to Manali is already being 4-laned. With the proposed greenfield alignment Delhi-Amritsar Expressway would now also provide alternative connectivity to Manali and Leh.
It also said that to provide express connectivity to Chandigarh from Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar, a greenfield spur (20 kms) from Ludhiana-Ropar road to Kharar (Chandigarh) is also proposed. With the proposed connectivity, the travel time between Chandigarh-Amritsar would reduce to 2hrs in comparison to the present travel time of 4 hrs. The proposed road is being developed under Flagship Bharatmala Pariyojana and would involve an investment of around Rs.4,000 crore. The detailed report for the proposed road is under progress.
The proposed Expressway/Greenfield highway and other related developments would have major impact in reducing travel to tourist/religious/industrial centres of Northern India as under: