Ghaziabad: The public works department has started work on laying a 111km road to be used by kanwar yatris along the Upper Ganga canal.
A pet project of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, the road will pass through Ghaziabad and Meerut to reach Muzaffarnagar.
Officials are hoping the corridor would be ready by June next year.
Once developed, the road will become an alternative route between Delhi-NCR and Uttarakhand and ease traffic load off the Delhi-Meerut Expressway.
“The project was proposed by the chief minister in 2018 with an aim to provide alternate connectivity between western UP and Uttarakhand.
The stretch will be developed along the canal and benefit the kanwar yatris,” said Sandeep Kumar, chief engineer of the PWD.
“According to the plan, the 111km road will have two lanes.
It will start from Purkazi in Muzaffarnagar and go all the way up to Muradnagar in Ghaziabad via Meerut,” he added.
The road will cover 56km in Muzaffarnagar, 42km in Meerut and 12km in Ghaziabad.
It will have 10 major bridges, 27 small ones and one railway overbridge.
“The bridges that are on the canal now are from the British period and were constructed in 1850.
Now that traffic load has increased, the bridges have to be constructed again.
The UP Bridge Corporation is handling that part,” said Kumar.
Since the stretch will pass through protected forest areas, the forest department has identified 223 hectares for a survey.
“Around 40,000 trees are coming in the way.
In keeping with the afforestation policy, 446 hectares have been identified in nearby areas for planting trees,” said Kumar.
Unpaved and unguarded along the sides, the stretch that passes along the canal now is notorious for accidents.
The bridges on the canal do not have railings and vehicles often plunge into the waterbody.
“Of an estimated Rs 628 crore earmarked for the corridor, we have set aside Rs 66 crore for installing safety measures on this stretch.
The project is expected to be complete by June 2022,” the PWD engineer said.
The UP government’s expenditure and finance committee had given approval to the project in October last year.
Every year during the kanwar yatra, the highways and expressways are choked with the sea of pilgrims.
The corridor aims at solving this problem.
It will also provide seamless connectivity to sugarcane farmers from western UP districts to visit the mandis in other districts and sell their produce.