Union minister on Rs. 25,000 crore Vadodara-Mumbai expressway project

By our correspondent,New Delhi, 5 August 2013

Union minister of state for Transport Shri Sarvey Satyanarayana today in Lok Sabha said that 400 km long Vadodara-Mumbai corridor is the highest density corridor in India. Construction of expressway on this corridor is central government’s priority. He said Rs. 25,000 crore Vadodara-Mumbai expressway project will be awarded within next four months.

The minister said, “In 2006, the cabinet committee on economic affairs in its meeting held on 2nd November, 2006 approved 1000 km of expressway on BOT basis under NHDP phase-VI out of the seven stretches. The seven stretches were:

Vadodara-Mumbai on national highway 8
Delhi-Chandigarh on national highway 1 and 22
Bangalore-Chennai corridor on national highway 4
Delhi-Jaipur corridor on national highway 8
Delhi-Meerut corridor on national highway 68
Kolkata Dhanbad corridor on national highway 2
and Delhi-Agra corridor on national highway 2.”

“However based on feasibility studies, it is now expected that the three expressways that is Vadodara-Mumbai, Delhi-Meerut and Bangalore-Chennai may attract the investors”.

“The main criterion for selection of the expressway corridor will be the traffic volume. The Vadodara-Mumbai corridor, which is of 400 kms on national highway 8, being the highest density corridor, will be given the top most priority.The remaining 600 kms will be selected out of the routes identified above on the basis of traffic volume.”

“It was decided that the feasibility study of the Vadodara-Mumbai corridor and pre-feasibility studies for the other sections may be taken up.”

“In the meeting taken by the Prime Minister on 28th June, 2013, a decision was taken that Vadodara-Mumbai expressway costing Rs. 25,000 crore would be accelerated for award within the next six months.”

“The existing express is this: Ahmedabad-Vadodara expressway is in the state of Gujarat with a length of 93.30 km which was completed in June 2005 by Government of India.The other expressway is the Eastern Peripheral expressway covering the state of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh having a length of 135 km is under implementation.”

On importance of expressway the minister said, “There has been tremendous growth in traffic. The roads have been widened to four lanes and in high density corridors to six lanes. Further widening beyond sixty meters would involve large scale demolition of properties. Inherent problems of existing roads such as level intersections, roads passing through congested areas etc may act as bottlenecks to the traffic and give rise to accidents.Therefore, expressway on entirely a new alignment for high traffic density corridors are needed to facilitate fast movement of commercial traffic and other road users.”

On challenges part, the minister said, “Due to heavy capital cost involved in land acquisition, costing Rs. 15 to Rs. 20 crore per km, construction cost of Rs. 30 to Rs. 40 crore per km, scale land acquisition and requirement of environment and forest clearances, wild life board clearances, coastal regulation zone clearances from the respective authorities on case to case basis, construction of expressways take considerable time for its implementation.”

“Besides this, there is another expressway, known as Eastern Peripheral Expressway having a total cost of Rs. 2,700 crore approved by the PPPAC. It was bid out twice without success. There has been a general perception that market has no appetite for such huge projects. However based on feasibility studies, it is now expected that the three expressways that is Vadodara-Mumbai, Delhi-Meerut and Bangalore-Chennai may attract the investors.”

He further said, “a number of expressways with access control are being planned. The cost of construction of an expressway is much higher than that of a normal highway project due to a substantial additional structures and a very high land acquisition cost because of it being a Greenfield alignment. Hence, the user fee rate of expressway should be more than that of a normal highways.”

“Expressways being greenfield projects need more capital investment as compared to normal 4/6-lane highway, therefore higher rate of user fee is required to make project viable.”

On highway construction he said, “In the year 2012-2013, there was about 2844 km of construction by the National Highway Authority of India. This is the highest ever lane constructed in any year.”