Pay toll on KMP eway on basis of distance

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 16

People travelling on the Kundli-Manesar section of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 19, will pay for the distance they travel and not for the entire corridor.

Seven toll plazas have been set up on the 82-km stretch of the six-laned KMP Expressway, which is access-controlled to charge the commuters according to the distance travelled by them.

While passenger cars will be charged @Rs1.35 per km, the light commercial vehicles will have to pay Rs2.18 per km. The truck/buses will have to pay @Rs4.57 per km and multi-axle vehicles will shell out Rs4.98 per km. The maximum toll of Rs8.72 per km will be charged from the oversized vehicles, according to Alok Nigam, Haryana’s Additional Chief Secretary, Public Works Department (Bridges & Roads).

Of the seven toll plazas, two of the toll plazas will be in Sonepat district at Abbaspur and Pipli villages, while another two will be in Jhajjar district at Mandholi and Badli. The remaining three toll plazas will be in Gurugram at Sultanpur, Patli-Hazipur and Mokalwas.

With the inauguration of the Kundli-Manesar section of the KMP Expressway, the entire stretch of 135-km highway, which is intended to ease congestion by bypassing Delhi on its western border, will now be open for traffic. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari had last year formally inaugurated the 53-km Manesar-Palwal section of the expressway, which was opened to traffic in 2016.

The expressway, which was conceived in 2002, was to be originally completed in July 2009. However, on account of litigation and various controversies, the project continued to hang fire during the 10-year rule of the previous Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The incumbent BJP government, especially Capt Abhimanyu, then Industries Ministers (October 26, 2014, to July 2016), put the project on the fast-track by resolving the legal issues. The two expressways — Kundli-Ghaziabad-Palwal (Eastern Peripheral Expressway) and the KMP (Western Peripheral Expressway) — were supposed to be the first smart and green highways in India.