PM to open two national highway projects today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Sunday inaugurate two key road projects aimed at decongesting the national capital, where traffic snarls and jams define the day-to-day lives of commuters.

The two major National Highway projects set to open tomorrow are worth a combined cost of nearly Rs 11,000 crore.

The projects — Delhi section of the Dwarka Expressway and the Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) — have been developed under the government’s comprehensive plan to decongest the Capital, with the objective of greatly improving connectivity, cutting travel time and reducing traffic in Delhi and its surrounding areas.

The 10.1-km-long Delhi section of the Dwarka Expressway has been developed at a cost of around Rs 5,360 crore. This section will also provide multi-modal connectivity to Yashobhoomi, Delhi Metro’s Blue Line and Orange Line, upcoming Bijwasan railway station and Dwarka cluster Bus Depot.

This section comprises 5.9 km from Shiv Murti intersection to the Road Under Bridge (RUB) at Dwarka Sector 21 and 4.2 km from Dwarka Sector 21 Road Under Bridge to the Delhi-Haryana Border, providing direct connectivity to Urban Extension Road-II.

The 19-km-long Haryana section of the Dwarka Expressway was earlier inaugurated by the Prime Minister in March 2024.

The second project - Alipur to Dichaon Kalan stretch of Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) along with new links to Bahadurgarh and Sonepat - has come up at a cost of Rs around 5,580 crore. This will ease traffic on Delhi’s Inner and Outer Ring Roads and busy points like Mukarba Chowk, Dhaula Kuan and NH-09.

The new spurs will give direct access to Bahadurgarh and Sonepat, improve industrial connectivity, cut city traffic and speed up goods movement in the NCR.

The Sunday inaugurations seek to let Delhi breathe easy.

TomTom, a Dutch geolocation group which live tracks travel times, congestion levels and speeds, as of Saturday said travel time per km in New Delhi was 21 minutes 40 seconds, congestion level was 24 per cent and speed 27.7 km/hour. There were 67 traffic jams in the Capital on August 16 and involved 25 km of road length.