MUMBAI: Motorists using the narrow (two-lane) Mumbai-Goa highway will be able to zoom past the Karnala bird sanctuary’s dense green stretch within the next three years. In the last week of November, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) cleared a proposal to widen the highway on a nearly 20km stretch along the sanctuary, barring a 2km core area.

This will facilitate completion of the first 84km phase of the Mumbai-Goa highway’s expansion between Panvel and Indapur in one-and-a-half years. This phase was stuck for over three years and work on only a 25-km stretch could be completed due to hurdles like environmental clearance and land acquisition.

“The green clearance is a major push for the project. We are in the last stages of finalising a proposal, as sought by the ministry, to build a bridge over a 2km dense green stretch of the sanctuary. It could be the most scenic road if that happens,” a senior National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) official told TOI.

The official said the detailed project report for the remaining 350km stretch, from Indapur to the Goa border, was ready for tendering in phases. “We hope this work too starts early as certain land acquisition and permission issues are being sorted out on a war footing,” he added.

In June, NHAI included four phases of the state’s most mishap-prone highway’s widening in its immediate agenda for land acquisition. “We received a call from NHAI’s Delhi authorities saying the acquisition process was being legalized in order to release funds for compensation and construction work,” an official closely associated with the project told TOI. However, actual construction work will begin over a year’s time and take at least three years to complete, as compensation against acquisitions remains a challenging task.

Experts said the Goa highway should be four-laned with dividers and safety walls on the side. The highway’s delayed widening and growing mishaps have diverted traffic to Goa via the Pune-Kolhapur route. Between January 2006 and December 2012, the Goa highway has seen 7,721 mishaps and 1,731 fatalities. While all highways leading to Mumbai from Surat, Nashik, and Pune have been widened, experts expressed surprise over the delay in widening the important Goa highway.

Moreover, the NH-17 does not have trauma centres or well-equipped ambulances resulting in increased fatalities due to lack of timely medical aid.