NH-56 will soon run under Varanasi International Airport

1. NH-56 will soon run under Varanasi International Airport The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Airport Authority of India (AAI) are collaborating on building the country’s first national-highway underpass beneath the runway of Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) International Airport, 23 km from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. The existing runway measures 2.75 km in length and will be expanded to 4.075 km to allow large cargo airliners such as Boeing to land, halt, and take off. As the project is yet to begin, the NHAI is repairing the existing highway stretch to decongest the road and provide smooth vehicular movement in the meanwhile. Back in 2013, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) had deliberated to expand LBS such that it facilitated large cargo airplanes. However, this required them to assimilate a significant portion of the NH-56 in the region and bypass it around the international airport for the traffic to flow, increasing road length and travel time as a result. Also, the AAI was allowed to expand the airport only to its Western side as the land to its East belonged to the Indian Railways. In order to solve these problems, the NHAI proposed to build the underpass so that the AAI could expand the airport without disturbing the alignment of the road or the flow of traffic, or having to acquire additional land. Besides this, the NHAI also will convert the existing 2-laned highway to 4-lane. This is in line with the government’s vision to widen all national highways and expressways in the country. The project, which is the first in the country to follow an airport-highway model, closely emulates a similar model in Leipzig, Germany, which involved the construction of a runway over a State highway, adjacent to a railway and a motorway, to tackle the problem of lack of area and increasing volume of traffic. The expansion of the international airport and the widening of the 2-laned roads to 4 lanes was supposed to begin in 2013. However, due to administrative reasons, the process of land acquisition for the initiative was stalled. In 2017, the project was revived as the Ministry of Civil Aviation brought the AAI and NHAI the necessary approvals and sanctions to acquire the lands. TheAAI will now get more than 593 acres of land in the Mangari, Bikunthpur, Karmi,

2. Ghamhapur Karmi, Sagunaha, and Pura Raghunathpur villages. This will help the NHAI continue with its underpass and lane widening. The NH-56 underpass, though, is a latest initiative, and has been announced amid various other projects being undertaken by the highways agency to modernise roads and highways infrastructure. Some of the recent, more prominent ones include the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) and the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME). The EPE is a 6-lane expressway built to decongest the National Capital Region by diverting vehicles plying towards cities surrounding New Delhi away from it; and, the DME is a first-of- its-kind 14-lane expressway to decongest the area between Delhi and Meerut, and reduce pollution levels. The EPE is fully operational and the DME’s first phase is open to the public.