Would you pay almost Rs 1,000 as toll on an expressway to reach Lucknow from Delhi in five and a half hours or save nearly 40 per cent and opt for a longer, more congested ride on a national highway Uttar Pradesh is betting on enough people choosing the first option to make such projects viable.Last week, the state started levying perhaps ?the country’s highest toll at Rs 570?, albeit with a 25 per cent discount for the first few months, on its showpiece Agra-Lucknow expressway,? ?believing ??people would pay for a high-quality road? to save time.It is now an access-controlled pair of expressways from Noida to Agra, and Agra to Lucknow, designed for speeds of 100-120 km per hour. The drive from Delhi to Lucknow takes half as much time as on the national highway, which passes? through crowded ?cities? such as Mathura and Kanpur?, gets? a lot of? intersection traffic and is heavily congested. “In these times, when speed and time are of the essence?, ?flights are cheap, expressways are the future,” said a senior UP government official.UP will get its third expressway – ?a 96-km road from ?Delhi to Meerut – by 2019 and work on the country’s ?upcoming ?longest 343-km Purvanchal Expressway from Lucknow to Ghazipur will begin in April. The ?135-km ?Eastern Peripheral Expressway, ?to decongest Delhi by acting as a ring road, is expected to be inaugurated? soon.However, only about 1,500 km of expressways exist in India. “?UP, Maharashtra ?and Gujarat are ?investing in expressways. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is perhaps the most successful model of expressways? and worth emulating?,” said the official, who did not wish to be identified.The CEO of UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority , Awanish Kumar Awasthi, told ET that there had been “no drop” in the number of about 6,000 vehicles taking the Agra-Lucknow expressway daily since tolling started last week. No toll was charged on the expressway for a year since it was opened to light vehicle traffic.High tolls on expressways has been an inhibiting factor but good traffic of almost 18,000 vehicles daily on the Noida-Agra expressway, which charges Rs 415 one-way toll that is far higher than the existing national highway, gives UP hope.?“The cost of building a greenfield expressway is almost double that of a national highway. The former costs about Rs 35-40 crore per km including a big amount on land acquisition,” Awasthi said.“The Agra-Lucknow Expressway is a high-quality road, still its toll has been kept at 1.7 times the NH and we are giving a 25% discount on that too. It is the most favourable toll on an expressway anywhere in the country,” he said.UP has projected that the number of vehicles taking this expressway daily will increase from ?6,000 at present to about 10,000 in 2025 and 15,000 in 2030. Built on the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) model, with UP government footing a cost of Rs 14,937 crore, including Rs 2,919 crore spent on acquiring 3,500 hectares of land in 232 villages from 30,456 farmers, toll is key to recovering the cost.The state will be spending Rs 22,317 crore on building the 341-km Purvanchal Expressway by 2020, including spending nearly Rs 7,500 crore on acquiring 4,332 hectares of land in 413 villages from 57,437 farmers. "The loan has to be paid back to banks,” an official said.Officials in UP and Maharashtra said expressways offer other major advantages and passenger conveniences that normal highways don’t – for instance, optical fibre will be laid alongside the Agra-Lucknow expressway by private firms to offer Wi-Fi facilities to people travelling on the expressway. UP has also started a feasibility study for building an industrial corridor alongside this expressway.“Th?is expressway connects the main townships and ?commercial centres on the northern side of the Yamuna. It also ensures development of adjo??ining areas. The expressway relieves NH-2 and ?NH-91 which are already congested. The expressway will also enable to move agricultural, horticultural and milk products rapidly to major cities, also infuse a ??new impetus to the development of the state by attracting investors in a big way?,” the UP government said in a recent note for firms interested in laying optical fibre and running wayside amenities and petrol pumps along the expressway, which are expected to start operations in two months?.A 3.3 km airstrip is integral to the expressway and one will also be built on the Purvanchal e-way near Sultanpur.The note said high traffic volumes are expected as the expressway is now open for both light and heavy vehicles.“The expressway connects two big cities of ?UP?, Agra and Lucknow, and pro??vides further connectivity to northern cities of India (??Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi, Chandigarh, etc.) and cities south-east to Lucknow (Rae-?Bareli, Faizabad, Azamgarh, Ballia and Buddha Circuit). The expressway is expected to witness high volume traffic??,” the note said.Other successful models of expressways are the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway and a planned e-way from Mumbai to Vadodara – the latter could be the longest expressway in ?India, surpassing the Purvanchal Expressway.? India, which is reported to have the lowest density of expressways in the world, is now looking to step up investment in this area.