Ahmedabad - Mumbai expressway

The Ahmedabad-Mumbai expressway project via Vadodara and Surat has been fast-tracked. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has finally invited tenders for the six lanes over the Narmada bridge. The authority has already invited tenders for the Ahmedabad-Vadodara stretch on national highway 8. Officials said that the NHAI had recently conducted a study to upgrade the six-kilometer-long four lanes of Narmada bridge to six lanes. About 65,000 cars ply daily on this corridor and this is expected to grow at 10 per cent. Once the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor materializes, this traffic is expected to grow at around 20 per cent. The average speed on a two-lane road is around 50 kmph and 65 kmph on a four-lane road. The average speed will increase to around 80 to 100 kmph on the six-lane road. Travelling from Ahmedabad to Surat presently takes nearly five hours, but with the new project, the time will be reduced to three and a half hours. Work along the Surat-Mumbai stretch is already in process and is likely to be completed by December 2011. Officials said that many value added services like hotels, urinals and petrol pumps will be started along the stretch.