With work on ground level progressing fast, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is set for an on-schedule opening of the elevated expressway between Silk Board Junction and Electronic City. The nine-km expressway will be thrown open to traffic in July, 2008.

“On the ground, 90 per cent of work on the six-laning and service roads is complete. The piling work for the elevated stretch is also on course,” Manoj Kumar, Project Director, told Deccan Herald on Wednesday.

The tolled expressway is being constructed by Soma Enterprise Limited, with Nagarjuna Construction Co and Maytas Infra Pvt Ltd, on the Bangalore–Hosur Section of NH 7 (from km 9.5 to km 18.5) on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. The consortium is also taking up work on the 15-km at-grade highway between Electronic City and the Tamil Nadu border.

In the expressway’s first year of operation, the traffic is expected to be 1,67,000 PCU (Passenger Car Units) per day at the Silk Board Junction and 1,10,000 PCU per day at the Electronic City Junction. The traffic on the stretch is expected to go up by 7.5 per cent every year.

‘Roads saturated’
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways T R Baalu, while briefing reporters on his inspection of the road work on Wednesday, said the Rs 765-crore expressway facilitated a 14-lane connectivity between the City and Electronic City.

 The road network has been saturated and the state would have to turn to Metro Rail to meet connectivity demands of the future, he said.

Re-designing sought
Earlier, representatives of IT industries urged Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy to prevail upon the Union Government to re-design the expressway so that it could be extended to HP Road.