Nagpur to Pune in 8 hours by road? Possible, says Nitin Gadkari

India's increasing network of high-speed expressways will soon have a new addition that promises to connect Nagpur and Pune, two of Maharashtra's important cities, easier for commuters. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari made the announcement that a new Green Expressway will help reduce the time currently taken to travel between the two cities quite drastically. According to the Union Minister, one will be able to travel from Nagpur to Pune by road in just eight hours, almost half of what it takes at present.

On Sunday, Nitin Gadkari said the newly proposed Green Expressway, to be called the Pune-Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) Access Control Green Expressway, will help the two cities come closer for those who choose to travel by road. The new expressway will be connected to the 701-km long Nagpur-Mumbai Expressway, also known as Nagpur-Mumbai Samridhi Mahamarg, near Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.

Gadkari said the new expressway project will be undertaken by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). "This will make it possible to travel from Pune to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) in two and half hours and from Nagpur to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) in five and half hours through Samruddhi Mahamarg," Gadkari announced in a series of tweets on Sunday.

The distance between Nagpur and Pune is 716 kms and it currently takes around 15 hours to travel by road to cover the distance through National Highway 753C.

According to the road plan shared Gadkari, the Pune-Nagpur Green Expressway will eventually connect to the Pune-Bengaluru Expressway near the city. It will bypass two reserve forests and will also have an intersection connecting it to the Surat-Chennai Expressway.

The new expressway will also bring Nagpur closer to Mumbai via road. It will help commuters to hit the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, a 95-km long 6-lane high-speed highway which takes less than three hours to cover the distance in a car. Overall, the distance between Nagpur and Mumbai will also be reduced to just around 11 hours.

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