Coming: Smooth ride to Meerut

Driving along the NH-58 from Delhi to Meerut will soon improve. The UP Govt has decided to construct an elevated road in Modinagar, which will ensure a smooth passage to traffic, reports Atul Mathur.

Driving along the National Highway-58 from Delhi to Meerut will soon improve. The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to construct an elevated road in Modinagar, which will ensure a smooth passage to traffic through the industrial town of western Uttar Pradesh.

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The elevated road will bring down the traveling time between Delhi and Meerut by at least 20 minutes. The elevated road will benefit a large number of people, who travel to the tourist cities of Dehradun, Mussoorie and Haridwar.

Taking up the project under the Integrated Urban Rejuvenation Plan, the UP government has invited expression of interests from competent infrastructure development companies.

According to senior UP government officials, the 5.5 kilometre long elevated road is expected to cost about rupees 400 crore.

“Modinagar is known for long traffic jams. Once this road is complete, the long distance traffic will fly over the congested stretch of the highway. This road will be similar to what the National Highway Authority of India has constructed in Panipat,” said a senior Uttar Pradesh Awas Bandhu official, the nodal agency entrusted with the responsibility to construct the elevated road.

According to officials, the Ghaziabad Development Authority Board has already given its go-ahead to the project.

The elevated road was initially planned to be constructed under the Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns scheme, with the central government sharing eighty per cent of the project cost.

The rest of the money was to be coughed up by the state government, GDA and Modinagar municipal council, an official said. The original project was to construct a 4.2 kilometre elevated road at a cost of Rupees 360 crore, which, now, has been revised.

The project will now be constructed under public private partnership. “It will be executed on Design-Build-Finance-Operate and Transfer basis and will take almost two years to complete,” an official said.