E-ways to bypass city may open by June end
EASTERN PERIPHERAL EXPRESSWAY WILL BE FINISHED BY END OF MARCH, ITS WESTERN COUNTERPART WILL BE COMPLETED BY JUNE END, THE SC WAS TOLD
NEWDELHI: Around 13 years after the Supreme Court proposed the construction of a peripheral expressway to decongest Delhi and reduce pollution in the Capital, the 271-km highway is expected to see the light of day in June this year.
A Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee informed the top court on Friday that the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) will complete the 135-km Kundli-ghaziabadPalwal or the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) by March end.
On the Kundli-manesar-palwal or the Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE), the committee said the concessionaire has promised to complete the 136-km road by June end.
Together, the two highways will form a ring road around Delhi which vehicles not bound for Delhi will use to bypass the Capital.
The report, placed before a bench of justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta, had details of how the money spent to acquire land for t he construction increased from the time the project was conceptualised and cleared by the court.
In its February 11, 2005 order, the court had recorded that an amount of ₹844 crore would be required for land acquisition. After enhancing it in stages, the cost has now gone up to over ₹8,100 crore. This is due to escalation in land acquisition cost, more land acquired for interchanges due to change in design, cost involved in shifting of utilities and arbitral awards.
The WPE will connect Kundli with Palwal via Manesar in Haryana while the EPE envisages a signal-free connectivity between Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gautam Budh Nagar (Greater Noida) and Palwal.
The court, which has been hearing a 1985 petition filed by environmentalist MC Mehta on various issues, including vehicular pollution, had asked the Centre to build the expressway for channelling non-delhi bound traffic.
The idea was not only to decongest Delhi but also to check pollution. The road will divert around 2 lakh vehicles — a large chuck of them polluting dieselspewing trucks — passing through the Capital every day.
Dubbed as the first smart and green highway, EPE and WPE will be equipped with intelligent highway traffic management system, video incident detection system, electrified by solar panels and faster electronic toll collection (ETC) systems at the toll booths.
Work on both the expressways were stalled due to disputes over land acquisition. WPE got detailed after a dispute between the Haryana government and DSC India Ltd, its former concessionaire. It was only after the top court’s intervention that a financial settlement was arrived between the two and the contract was given to a new concessionaire. To form a ‘ring road’ around Delhi that will allow trucks and other commercial vehicles to bypass the capital entirely
After these roads are completed, vehicles going from north India to western and southern part of the country can pass through without entering into Delhi These vehicles will also be able to bypass Gurgaon and Delhi, which will reduce pollution in NCR Currently, trucks from Gurgaon side and heading to Ghaziabad and vice versa pass through Delhi, causing pollution and accidents An estimated 2 lakh outbound vehicles pass through Delhi daily
Kundli to Palwal via Noida and Ghaziabad
Kundli and Palwal via Manesar in Haryana