Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Ravindra Chavan announced that the Mumbai-Goa highway (NH-66) is expected to be finished before Ganeshotsav next month.
Minister Chawan said, “The PWD is trying to finish this project within a month. We want the Mumbai-Goa National Highway to be functional before the Ganpati festival. The detailed project report work for the Mumbai-Sindhudurg route is in its final stage.”
At the very moment, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde tweeted that, “The 18-hour journey through the Samruddhi Highway has come down to 8 to 10 hours. This is proving useful in terms of expanding industry opportunities for farmers and travelers. The government has prioritized the expansion of various such communication facilities, and the communication facilities will be expanded in this manner in Konkan too.”
Even though construction is still going on, fissures have appeared in a number of places along the Panvel to Pen Taluka section of the Mumbai-Goa highway and have been patched with concrete by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
Since the highway portion is also used by loaded heavy vehicles, activists and residents claim that the six-inch concrete layer of highway work will not hold up. The 471-kilometer, four-lane Goa Mumbai Highway in western India is anticipated to reduce the distance between the two cities’ travel times by about six hours once it is finished. It is also projected to promote tourism in the Konkan region’s unexplored regions.
