New Delhi: Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari last month said that the Mumbai-Delhi greenfield expressway would be extended to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT). Earlier it was supposed to be built up to Thane city. The expressway, which is expected to cost around Rs 1 lakh crore, will be India’s flagship greenfield expressway. It will reduce the distance between Delhi and Mumbai by about 220 kilometres at the same time vehicles will be able to run on this highway at a speed of 120 km per hour.

Here are key thing you need to know:

1) This expressway will span over 1,275 km and will pass through the states of Madhya Pradesh (370 km), Gujarat (300 km), Haryana (80 km), Rajasthan (380 km) and Maharashtra (120 km). It will have its north end in Delhi and south end in Mumbai.

2) It will be an eight-lane highway (four-lane on each side) with the provision to expand it into 12-lanes in the future.

3) Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is expected to reduce travel time between the two cities to 12 hours from nearly 24 hours now.

4) The expressway will have 5 animal overpasses with a combined length of more than 2.5 km. The animals will get a passage at every 500-metre interval. It will also have a boundary wall of 8 metres with a sound barrier of 3-4 metres in the corridor.

5) A network of 75-way side amenities is also planned on either side of the expressways at an interval of 50 kilometres. These facilities will include restaurants, food courts, dormitories, convenience stores, fuel stations, EV charging points and toilets.

6) The Vadodara Mumbai Expressway has been subsumed into Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.

7) The foundation stone of the Delhi-Mumbai expressway was laid by Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj And Arun Jaitley on 8 March 2019. The expressway is expected to be completed by March 2024

8) the expressway will have direct connectivity to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport’s T3 terminal via a 5km-long tunnel.

9) Earlier, Nitin Gadkari in a Twitter post had said that the Delhi-Mumbai expressway will transform the country’s infrastructure and provide better opportunities to millions. He also shared a video showing the progress of the project in Haryana and Rajasthan.