The Centre has launched an ambitious project - a super expressway connecting the national Capital with the country's commercial capital, Mumbai. The project, to be completed in four phases, will enable commuters to complete the journey of 1,400-km between the two cities in flat 12 hours, Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said.

Work has already begun on the first and the last stretches of the expressway, i.e. between Delhi and Jaipur and Vadodara and Mumbai.

"In the first phase, Delhi will be connected to Jaipur and Vadodara to Mumbai via super expressways. We plan to construct expressways from Jaipur to Kota in Rajasthan and further Kota to Vadodara. This will reduce the travel time between Delhi and Mumbai to less than 12 hours as compared to nearly 24 hours at present," Gadkari said.

Once completed, officials claimed, the super expressway will provide faster connectivity between Delhi and Mumbai than the trains. The distance between the two cities is covered by Rajdhani Express in 16 hours.

The Centre has begun work on Rs 8 lakh crore Bharatmala Pariyojana Programme, under which expressway projects of aggregate length 1,837 km are to be developed. The Delhi-Jaipur and Vadodara-Mumbai expressways are part of the Bharatmala project.

According to NHAI officials, the work on Delhi-Jaipur expressway (225 km approx) would be completed in 15 months instead of the originally planned 30 months. It is likely to cost Rs 16,000 crore. The land acquisition process for the new highway is on. The new road would start from the outskirts of Gurugram and at the Jaipur Ring Road. In addition, the minister also said this is the second advanced cement concrete highway in the country after the Mumbai-Pune expressway.

Currently, the duration by road between Delhi and Jaipur is over six hours, which has a maximum speed limit of 90 km per hour for passenger vehicles. The new expressway will be access-controlled that would help in maintaining consistent high speed. Sources said these expressways will have a speed limit of around 150 km per hour to achieve the claimed time limit.

The expressway will reduce the distance between the two cities by around 40 km, and the journey can be completed in two hours. These projects would significantly improve transport infrastructure and traffic movement along NH-8, the mostcongested entry point to the Capital.

Official sources said more than three lakh vehicles use this corridor every day with the traffic volume comprising a large number of heavy goods vehicles. Meanwhile, the government has begun awarding contracts for the Vadodara-Mumbai expressway. The construction work would cost Rs 44,000 crore. Once completed, the distance of 380 km can be covered in less than three hours.

Apart from these two projects, the government has also approved expressways in different parts of the country. These include Ahmedabad-Dholera, Delhi-Meerut, Kanpur-Lucknow, Chennai-Bengaluru and Delhi-Amritsar-Katra. First phase of Delhi-Meerut expressway is scheduled to be opened on April 15.

On the same day, the government will open the eastern peripheral expressway in the Capital. The two projects are crucial for decongestion of Delhi, taking off the vehicular load up to 50 per cent.

Gadkari said two months after opening of these projects, the western peripheral expressway will also be started. Gadkari said Delhi will further be connected to the cities like Dehradun, Amritsar and Katra by expressways.

These roads will be access-controlled and facilitate high speed. Apart from this, the government is expediting the work on Char Dham road in Uttarakhand. The Rs 12,000-crore project, aiming to provide all-weather connectivity between shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri, is scheduled to be completed by March 2019. While the project was delayed due to weather, the NDA wants it to be ready before Lok Sabha polls due next year.