Mumbai–Nagpur Expressway or Mumbai Nagpur Samruddhi Mahamarg or Hindu Hrudayasmrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samriddhi Highway is a 701 km long, 8-lane, 120 meter wide planned highway. The route will connect Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai with Maharashtra’s vice-capital Nagpur. The highway will pass through 10 districts, 26 taluks and 390 villages and will cover the journey between Mumbai and Nagpur in 8 hours. The project is expected to cost Rs. 55,335.32 crore.
Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) will be the implementing agency for the project. The speed limit for vehicles on this route will be 150 kmph on flat ground and 100 kmph on the Sahyadri Ghats. The state government is going to build 24 cities on this route. These cities will have state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, skill management centers, IT parks and educational institutes. A total of 28,280 hectares of land has been acquired from 10 districts for the project, of which 8,520 hectares will be used for highways while 10,800 hectares will be for new towns. Mararvimala needs a loan of 28 thousand crores from banks to finance the project.
To speed up pre-construction work on the highway, Marawim decided to divide the project into five packages and hired an independent consultancy firm to prepare detailed project reports for each package. The civil work is now divided into 16 packages.
The expressway will pass through ten districts namely Thane, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Jalna, Buldhana, Washim, Amravati, Wardha and Nagpur. It will be 120 meters wide. The median bisector is 22.5 meters. It will have a total of eight channels (lenses) four on each side. If a lane is to be widened in future, the open area in the middle of the road can be used for that. Therefore, in future, when new roads are required, there will be no need for land outside the 120 meters plan. The project will have more than 50 flyovers and more than 24 interchanges. Apart from this, more than 5 tunnels, more than 400 subways passing under the highway for vehicles and more than 300 subways for pedestrians will be constructed at many strategic locations. Due to this, the traffic on the main highway will continue smoothly without any disruption. Also the local people will not have any hindrance of the highway in their communication, and accidents will be avoided. Entry and exit points on this expressway will be controlled. Toll will be charged according to the distance covered on the highway. Automatic toll collection is proposed on the expressway. Service channels such as OFC cables (Optical Fiber Cable), gas pipelines and electricity carriers will be laid along the expressway.
The first phase of Samriddhi Highway will be inaugurated on 11 December 2022 by Prime Minister Narendra. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said that the first phase of the 701 km Nagpur Mumbai Samriddhi Highway from Nagpur to Shirdi will be operational from December 11, 2022. The first phase is 520 km from Nagpur to Shirdi. After the opening of this highway, Nagpur to Shirdi distance can be covered in 5 hours instead of 10 hours.
Mumbai Nagpur Samruddhi Mahamarg Project Highlights
- Maharashtra Samriddhi Highway is a completely new construction (greenfield project).
- The distance between Mumbai and Nagpur can be covered in 8 hours for passenger traffic and 16 hours for cargo traffic.
- This highway will connect 24 districts out of 36 districts of Maharashtra state.
- The highway will pass through 392 villages in twenty-six talukas of ten districts in five of the six revenue divisions of the state.
- This will connect the far-flung districts of Maharashtra with Mumbai port and Mihan (‘Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport at Nagpur’) from where cargo can be transported anywhere in the world via Nagpur air route.
- The land required for this will be collected from the land holders by implementing a specific scheme, where all the land owners will be partners in the scheme. Under this scheme, the proposed Agricultural Prosperity Centres, i.e. New-towns, will also be developed.
- The Maharashtra Samriddhi Highway project is going to promote the overall development of rural areas in the state based on domestic and international investment.
- With all the hurdles in this highway cleared, the Maharashtra Chief Minister has ordered the completion of the project by December 2021.
- The new deadline for the Nagpur to Shirdi route is now December 2021, while the revised deadline for the Nagpur to Thane route is now December 2022.
Samruddhi Mahamarg Route
