02 February,2020 07:35 AM IST | Mumbai | A correspondent
In some good news for motorists who travel between Mumbai and New Delhi by road, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her budget speech on Saturday, said that the Mumbai-Delhi Expressway would be developed on priority and be ready by 2023.
Once complete, the travel time between the two destinations would reduce by eight hours. At present, it takes around 20 hours to reach Delhi. With this expressway, the journey will come down to 12 hours. "Accelerated development of highways will be undertaken. This will include development of 2,500 km access control highways, 9,000 km of economic corridors, 2,000 km of coastal and land port roads and 2,000 km of strategic highways," the finance minister said, during her speech.
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Nirmala Sitharaman
She also said that FASTag - a device that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for making toll payments - will encourage greater commercialisation of highways. The finance minister also said that department will provide about R1.7 lakh crore for transport infrastructure in 2020-21.
While city-related infra projects like the Metro were expected to get special allocation in the budget, at this juncture, at least, there has not been any specific mention made by Sitharaman.
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