Nagpur To Pune In Just 6 Hours, Work On New Expressway Between Pune And Aurangabad To Begin Soon

Soon, those travelling from Nagpur will be able to reach Pune in 6 hours, via a new proposed expressway connecting Pune to the recently inaugurated Samruddhi Mahamarg.

On 11 November, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari announced that the work on 268-km-long expressway between Pune and Aurangabad will start soon.

“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we are building a highway from Aurangabad to Pune and soon its work will start, so that we can reach Pune from Nagpur in just 6 hours. We are also building 6 express highways in Maharashtra,” Gadkari said in Nagpur.

Alignment

The access-controlled highway will start from the Pune-Bengaluru highway intersection with Pune’s proposed ring road and will connect to the Samruddhi Expressway at Aurangabad.

To be made at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore, the greenfield expressway between Pune and Aurangabad will reduce the travel time between the two cities to 1.15 hours from the current 4-5 hours.

The proposed alignment has a length of 268 km, which includes a ring road around Pune city covering 39 km, a 20 km spur (12 km to Ranjangaon and 8 km to Bidkin-Shendra).

Samruddhi Corridor

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on 11 November inaugurated the first phase of the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway.

The 701-km, six-lane access-controlled road will reduce the travel time between Nagpur and Mumbai from 16 hours to eight hours.

In the first phase of the project, the 520-km-long stretch between Nagpur and Shirdi, has been inaugurated.

The remaining 181-km stretch under Phase-2, between Shirdi and Mumbai, will end in Thane’s Vadpe area in the Bhiwandi district, and will be ready by 2024.

The expressway passes via Nagpur-Wardha-Amravati-Washim-Buldhana-Jalna-Aurangabad-Nashik-Ahmednagar-Thane.  

The Pune-Aurangabad expressway will pass through Pune, Ahmednagar, Beed and Aurangabad districts before joining the Samruddhi corridor in Aurangabad.

As part of infrastructure-led development, the state government has planned to connect all 36 districts of Maharashtra, over the next two decades, through 5,000 km of access control expressways.