The Centre has approved the laying of an expressway between Mumbai and Vadodara. The 400-km stretch will be connected to the Ahmedabad-Vadodara expressway-which is already operational-offering a seamless drive between the two state capitals. The estimated travel time of five hours will be two hours less than that of the Shatabdi Express. 

The Vadodara-Mumbai expressway will follow the alignment fixed by the state government in 1992, said officials of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). For the project, a 600-metre wide corridor has been set aside. The expressway will have six lanes between Vadodara and Surat and eight between Surat and Dahisar. 

Work on the expressway, which will originate in Dahisar, is likely to be finished by 2015. The project will be on the design-build-financeoperate model and will cost Rs 7,500 crore. The approval for the project came from the Union road transport and highway ministry as part of the approval for building over 1,000 km of expressways under the Rs 16,000-crore National Highway Development Programme. 

The expressway will be designed for an average speed of 120 km per hour. Wayside amenities have been proposed at approximately 50-km intervals. Small parking areas with toilets will come up every 25 km. 

The decision to have eight lanes was taken keeping in view the traffic between Mumbai and the industrial belt of Hazira. 

An NHAI official said that since asubstantial stretch of the expressway would lie along the coast, measures would be taken for ensuring that wave patterns were not hampered in any way. He said NHAI would also ensure that the project did not cause hardship to local populations .

TOI