Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday announced that the construction of eight expressways in the country, including the Bengaluru-Chennai one, would start in 2021-22.
"The Bengaluru–Chennai Expressway will be initiated in the current financial year," said the minister while presenting the Union Budget. "The construction will begin in 2021-22."
The 262-kilometre Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway, which was first conceived in 2011, will reduce the travel time between the two cities to four hours once it is complete.
The proposed project will run through Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The highway starts from Hoskote and ends at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu where it will connect to Chennai’s outer ring road.
The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has started the process of land acquisition for the project.
The six-lane access-control expressway will be built with an investment of Rs 20,000 crore.
The construction of the expressway between the Chennai-Salem corridor (277 km) and the Raipur-Vishakhapatnam section - 464 km passing through Chhattisgarh, Odisha and northern Andhra Pradesh - will start in 2021-22, said the minister.
"An advanced traffic management system with speed radars, variable message signboards and GPS-enabled recovery vans will be installed in the all-new four- and six-lane highways," said the minister.
(Published 01 February 2021, 12:50 IST)
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