If a proposed Rs. 20,000 crore six-laned greenfield expressway project of the road ministry sees the light of the day, traveling between Delhi and Ludhiana will become a breeze in the near future.

The road ministry on Wednesday gave an in-principle approval to build a 357 km access controlled expressway connecting the national capital to the industrial city of Ludhiana which will bring down the traveling time by half.

Presently, a road journey between Delhi and Ludhiana takes over six hours.  

"Three states -- Delhi, Punjab and Haryana today gave in-principle approval  to build the Delhi-Ludhiana Expressway, route map for which would be finalised by next month," road minister CP Joshi said following a meeting with Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Punjab deputy CM Prakash Singh Badal among others.

Joshi said townships would develop alongside of the expressway nodes from which traffic would be allowed to exit.

"We would discuss the cross subsidy model from real estate for funding the project once the alignment is fnalised," he said.

Delhi, Haryana and Punjab would acquire land for the project in their respective states. The road ministry said that Rs. 5,000 crore would be spent on land acquisition.

The cabinet had earlier approved building an expressway from Delhi to Chandigarh but given demands from states, it has been decided now to re-align the project from Delhi to Ludhiana with a link to Chandigarh.