Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway to be operational in January 2024, will cut travel time to 2 hours, says Nitin Gadkari

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said that the travel time between Bengaluru and Chennai will be shortened to just two hours after inauguration of the new Greenfield Expressway in January 2024. Speaking at the 75th anniversary programme of Ashok Leyland in Chennai, Gadkari said the Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway will be operational by January 2024.

The Bengaluru-Chennai expressway is one of the 36 Greenfield Expressways under construction at present. Earlier, the government had projected to complete by March 2024.

“In the month of January next year, we will start the Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway where the duration of traveling between the two cities will be two hours only. You can then launch luxury buses and electric sleeper coach buses and give a similar experience as that of business class. Since it is electric, you can also reduce the ticket rate by 30 per cent,” said Gadkari.

He added: “We are building 36 green expressway projects. We are building the Chennai-Delhi expressway. I just took a review of the Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway which would be completed by the end of this year."

The 262 km-long Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway is being built at a cost of over Rs 17,930 crore and will pass-through Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. The highway will be eight-lane for a distance of 240 km. The rest, about 22 km, will be an elevated stretch. The government has acquired a total land of 2650 hectares of land for the project.

The works were divided into three phases: The first phase, between Hoskote and Bethamangala in Karnataka, covered 62.6 km. The second phase will cover a stretch of 85 km, from Bethamangala to Gudipala in Andhra Pradesh. The third phase, which will be about 106 km, will connect Gudipala to Sriperumbuddur in Tamil Nadu.

Besides this, the Centre has also proposed a Bengaluru–Mangalore Greenfield Expressway and Mangaluru–Chennai Expressway through Bengaluru.

“We are making good roads. We are connecting Delhi to Chennai via Surat, Nasik, Ahmednagar, Kurnool, Chennai (and beyond to), Kanyakumari, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi (and also to) Bengaluru and Hyderabad, through the access-controlled highways project,” the minister further added.

Gadkari noted that the automobile sector contributes 6.5 per cent to India’s GDP and would play a key role in PM Narendra Modi’s vision of a $5-trillion economy in next five years. The Indian automobile sector is the third largest in the world, and also contributes the maximum GST to the Central and State governments, he said.

Gadkari added the aim is to become No. 1 in automobiles as the Centre is working to reduce the cost of logistics to 9 per cent from the current 14 per cent-16 per cent.

He also noted that hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Pointing to the pollution from fossil fuels, he highlighted the measures to switch to electric vehicles and run buses and trucks with methanol.

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