PWD gets go-ahead for repair of 26-km Delhi-Meerut Road

The public works department will start the repair work after September 15.

Officials of the public works department (PWD) have received the go-ahead for starting the special repairs of the 26-km stretch of the Delhi-Meerut Road. Officials said that they will be floating tenders and will begin the repair after September 15.

The special repair of a 26-km stretch from Duhai to Kadrabad of the Delhi-Meerut Road is expected to cost Rs 17 crore. (HT File Photo)

PWD officials said that the special repair of a 26-km stretch from Duhai to Kadrabad of the Delhi-Meerut Road (erstwhile NH-58), near Ghaziabad-Meerut border, will cost Rs 17 crore. Earlier, the department had sent a proposal to the government for widening the stretch from four lanes to six lanes at a cost of Rs 208 crore.

“The widening proposal could not get through, but now we have been given a go-ahead for special repairs. We had sent an estimate of Rs 17 crore. We will now be floating tenders and the work is likely to begin after September 15 when the monsoon season ends. The other part of the erstwhile NH-58 will be widened by the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC),” Manish Verma, executive engineer, PWD, said.

Officials said presently, patchwork is being laid on the roads and the bitumen layer will be added after the rainy season.

The vital stretch of the erstwhile NH-58 was denotified as a national highway and is presently under maintenance by the state PWD. As per official estimates, the road stretch caters to nearly 80,000 to 90,000 passenger car units per day and witnesses major movement of vehicles between Delhi and Meerut. It is also used by commuters travelling to Uttarakhand.

The other part of the erstwhile NH-58 in Ghaziabad spans nine kilometres from Meerut-crossing to Duhai. The NCRTC officials said that they will be widening the 9-km stretch up to 10 metres, nearly one lane each side.

The NCRTC will be taking up a Rs 32,000 crore project involving the construction of the rapid rail transit system (RRTS); one of the three phases includes the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut stretch. The NCRTC will start its construction activities on the first part of the Sahibabad to Duhai stretch in Ghaziabad.

The RRTS project involves the movement of high-speed trains on an elevated corridor with a design speed of 180 kmph and an operational speed of 160 kmph. The pillars for the RRTS will be constructed on the median of the erstwhile NH-58.