Lucknow - Agra Expressway

Three years from now, you will be able to travel between Lucknow and Agra in three hours. On November 22, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will lay the foundation stone of India’s longest expressway between the two cities. The 302-km greenfield expressway will be nearly twice as long as the Yamuna Expressway (165 km) between Agra and Greater Noida. It is expected to cut the current six hour travel time between Lucknow and Agra by half. So in 2017, if one adds the two eways, it would become possible to cover the distance between Delhi and Lucknow via Agra in six to seven hours.
On Wednesday, the UP government signed an MoU with five developers for the project.
A 36-month deadline has been set for the completion of the expressway.
After the CG City, the Lucknow Metro and the Janeshwar Mishra Park, the construction of the expressway is another of Yadav’s big ticket projects. Each kilometre of the expressway will cost about Rs.30 crore. The total cost of the project, including the compensation paid to farmers after land acquisiton, will be around Rs.15,000 crore.The expressway will pass through Lucknow, Unnao, Kannauj, Mainpuri, Firozabad, Etawah and Kanpur.
Uttar Pradesh Expressway Industrial Authority (UPEIDA) CEO Navneet Shegal said apart from reducing the travel time between Agra and Lucknow to about three hours, the country's longest expressway would also give a huge boost to economic activities since farmers would be able to take their produce to Agra and Delhi to get better prices.
He said the expressway would be designed to facilitate farmers and milk producers. Five farm `mandis' would also be developed by the government along the expressway and the entire expenditure would be realized through toll tax.
Chief secretary Alok Ranjan said the government was confident of completing the project within the 36 month deadline. While the government has announced a 0.4% incentive for the developers if the project is completed before the stipulated period, the latter would have to cough out 0.5% of the project cost in case of a delay. Of the 3,100 hectares of land that has to be acquired for the project, UPEIDA has already secured 2,300 hectares.
The expressway project has been divided into five phases and each phase has been given to a different construction company . Construction work for the first phase (Agra to Firozabad, 56.134 km) has been granted to PNC Infra Tech, for the second (Firozabad to Etawah, 62 km) to Apcon Infrastructure, for the third (Etawah to Kannauj, 57 km) to NCC, for the fourth (Kannauj to Unnao, 64 km) to Apcon Infrastructure and for the fifth (Unnao to Lucknow, 63 km) to L&T.