Ghaziabad: Commuters driving from Delhi to Meerut will get the first full expressway experience beginning Thursday when the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) opens the remaining two of the four phases of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) to traffic for a trial run.
If one is using the access-controlled lanes of the expressway — the six middle lanes, three on either side — the 82km drive from Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan to Meerut will take under an hour. Earlier, the drive between the two cities used to take at least two hours. The formal inauguration of the expressway will, however, take place in about two months.
The expressway has been opened in phases since May 2018 but it’s only from Thursday that commuters can use the access-controlled expressway lanes to drive all the way from Sarai Kale Khan in Delhi to Meerut without having to take diversions into service lanes. The drive from Meerut to Delhi, however, will still not be an uninterrupted one because the lanes for Delhi-bound traffic are closed at UP Gate because of the farmers’ agitation. But before the formal commissioning of the DME, officials said, NHAI hopes to complete the testing of its automated toll collection system, which would eliminate the need for a toll plaza, and also stop jaywalkers especially on the Noida Sector 62-Indirapuram, Chijarsi and Vijay Nagar stretches by raising the height of barricades by 1.5 metres.
Mudit Garg, project director, NHAI, said: “On Tuesday, after conducting the final tests, we gave a representation at the Union ministry of road transport and highways and got a go-ahead for officially throwing open the entire DME from April 1. The inauguration will, however, take place in about two months. But for commuters, the DME is now open.” The foundation stone for upgrading the expressway was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2015. The project, divided into four packages, was expected to be over by November 2019, but a series of impediments — from delay in acquiring land to pollution, Covid restrictions and farmers’ protest — delayed the project by nearly 16 months. “Of the four packages, the stretch from Sarai Kale Khan to UP Gate was made operational in May 2018 and the 22.2km stretch from Dasna to Hapur in September 2019. Two other stretches — 19.2km from UP Gate to Dasna and 31.8km from Dasna to Meerut — took a long time to complete due to issues like delay in acquisition of land and other restrictions that stopped the work completely,” said Garg.
Of the 82km, 60km is part of DME and 22km (Dasna to Hapur) is part of NH-9. It is a 14-lane highway, of which six lanes in the middle are DME and the eight others are NH-9. “About 4,500 streetlights have been installed and the road will have 200 CCTV cameras. There will be two toll plazas — at Chhijarsi in Ghaziabad and Kashi in Partapur, Meerut — and a successful testing of automatic number plate reader to the FASTag system was done. For now, we will not be charging toll fees on phases 2 and 4,” Garg said.