210 km Delhi-Dehradun Expressway To Be Complete By Dec 2023 End: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari

The construction work of the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway will be complete by the end of December this year, reducing the journey time between the two cities to two hours, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said.

''Work on the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway project will be over by December end and from January 1 next year people will be travelling from Dehradun to Delhi in just two hours,'' Gadkari said during a visit to Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh on Sunday.

A journey from Dehradun to Delhi at present takes around six hours.

The Delhi - Dehradun Economic corridor is set to reduce the distance between the two cities from 235 km to 210 km and compress the travel time from 6.5 hours to just 2.5 hours once completed.

The expressway will have 25 kilometres of the elevated road - 6 km in the open, 14 km in tunnels. The entire corridor is designed for driving with a minimum 100 Kmph speed though the six-lane highway will pass through pristine forest areas.

Besides reducing the travel time to the capital of Uttarakhand, the expressway would also improve connectivity to the Hindu spiritual centre, Haridwar, as a greenfield alignment project from Delhi-Dehradun Economic Corridor, connecting Halgoa, Saharanpur to Bhadrabad, Haridwar will be constructed at the cost of over Rs 2,000 crore.

Gadkari who visited the Ashram to take part in a Ganga Aarti said the all-weather road project will make year-round Char Dham Yatra possible.

''Char Dham Yatra goes on for six months at present. But, once the all-weather road project is complete, devotees can visit the Himalayan temples throughout the year,'' he said.

Work on the ropeway project in Kedarnath whose foundation stone was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October, 2022 has also begun, he said. The 12.97 km ropeway, the longest in the world at an altitude of 11,500 feet, will go from Sonprayag to the Himalayan temple.

(With inputs from PTI)