A Correspondent smdmail@ mid- day. com IN some good news for motorists who travel between Mumbai and New Delhi by road, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her budget speech on Saturday, said that the Mumbai- Delhi Expressway would be developed on priority and be ready by 2023.
Once complete, the travel time between the two destinations would reduce by eight hours.
At present, it takes around 20 hours to reach Delhi. With this expressway, the journey will come down to 12 hours. u201c Accelerated development of highways will be undertaken. This will include development of 2,500 km access control highways, 9,000 km of economic corridors, 2,000 km of coastal and land port roads and 2,000 km of strategic highways,u201d the finance minister said, during her speech She also said that FASTagu2014 a device that employs Radio Frequency Identification ( RFID) technology for making toll paymentsu2014 will encourage greater commercialisation of highways.
The finance minister also said that department will provide about R 1.7 lakh crore for transport infrastructure in 2020- 21.
While city- related infra projects like the Metro were expected to get special allocation in the budget, at this juncture, at least, there has not been any specific mention made by Sitharaman.
The FASTag will help the NHAI raise more resources. I propose to monetise at least 12 lots of highway bundles of over 6,000 km before 2024 Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
