The cost of the new link expressway is expected to be significant given high land prices in the area.
The Yogi Adityanath government is planning a 110-km four-lane expressway to link CM's constituency Gorakhpur with the proposed 350-km Purvanchal Expressway (Lucknow to Ghazipur), the longest e-way in the country.
Avneesh Awasthi, the CEO of UP Expressway Authority, told ET that the proposed link would bring key "north-south" connectivity in Eastern UP where all major roads are aligned west-east. This new expressway link to Gorakhpur is also expected to criss-cross a new highway that the NHAI is building from the PM's constituency Varanasi to Ayodhya. Thus, the two roads could offer connectivity between all the three holy towns of UP.
The link expressway will start from Azamgarh on the six-lane Purvanchal Expressway and go till Gorakhpur. The Yogi government earlier added a 20-km link road to Ayodhya from the Purvanchal Expressway. The cost of the new link expressway is expected to be significant given high land prices in the area. UP government informed prospective bidders of the pre-feasibility study on the Gorakhpur link expressway that the cost of land acquisition for the link road is expected to be worked out based on four times of the circle rates. "The tentative estimated length of Gorakhpur Link expressway is about 90-110 km," the UP government informed the bidders recently.
Awasthi said the new link road would also "serve three unserved districts", including northern Azamgarh, Sant Kabir Nagar and southern Gorakhpur. "Right now, we have a national highway connecting Lucknow to Gorakhpur. What is being proposed is that when the Purvanchal Expressway goes up to Azamgarh, from there we have a north-south connect to Gorakhpur. A bridge is being constructed on a major river, Ghagra, between Azamgarh and Gorakhpur and this link road can help connect it. Southern part of Gorakhpur and northern part of Azamgarh were not linked as there was no link between them. All roads in East UP are presently east-west," Awasthi said.
