According to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, the central government plans to build an expressway linking Bengaluru and Mumbai that will cut the travel time by half to just five hours.
He said that the Mumbai-Pune Expressway will be linked to this highway.
The Mumbai-Pune Express Highway will take a turn near Pune’s Ring Road and begin as a highway heading toward Bengaluru, according to the Union Minister.
Currently, it takes 16 to 17 hours to drive the 981.4 kilometres between Bengaluru and Mumbai.
Addressing an event on Monday (17 October), Gadkari said, “we are planning a green express highway between Mumbai and Bengaluru. It will be a five-hour journey between the tech capital and the financial capital. The travel time between Bengaluru and Pune will also reduce to 3.5 to four hours, once this expressway comes to use,” reports Hindustan Times.
According to him, India will have 26 new green expressways within the next three years, which will shorten travel time for those who choose to use roads.
By the end of the year, Gadkari added that there would be highways linking Delhi with Dehradun in two hours, Haridwar with Delhi in two hours, Jaipur with Delhi in two hours, Chennai with Bengaluru in two hours, and Lucknow with Kanpur in half-an-hour.
However, the current speed limitations in India may not allow such drastic decrease in travel time.
To cover almost 900 km in five hour, one must travel at a speed of over 180 kmph which is both unfeasible and unallowed in India.