NHAI, AAI Plan National Highway under International Airport in UP

1. NHAI, AAI Plan National Highway under International Airport in UP The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) recently revealed its plans to build an underpass for the Varanasi-Lucknow National Highway (NH-56) beneath the runway of the Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) International Airport in the State of Uttar Pradesh. When completed, the NH-56 will become the first highway in India to pass under an airstrip. The LBS International Airport runway, which measures 2,750 m in length, will be extended to 4,075 m to allow large cargo airliners, such as the Boeing 747, 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. According to the NHAI, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) deliberated to expand the International Airport such that it facilitates the landing of large cargo airplanes. This requires 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. Adding to this engineering challenge, the AAI, which sought to initiate the project back in 2013, was allowed to expand the airport only to its Western side as the land to its East belonged to the Indian Railways and has an active railway track. To solve these challenges, the highways authority mulled its plan to build the underpass so that the AAI can expand the airport without changing the alignment of the NH or disturbing the flow of traffic or having to acquire land in the East. Additionally, the NHAI plans to convert the highway into a 4-lane road in line with the Central government’s mission to widen highways and expressways. The project becomes the first in the country to follow the airport-highway fused model, closely emulating a similar undertaking in Leipzig, Germany, which involved the construction of an airstrip overpass across a State highway adjacent to a railway and a motorway to tackle the problem of lack of area and increasing vehicle traffic. As mentioned earlier, the expansion of the international airport and the addition of the 4 lanes to the highway was supposed to begin in 2013. However, due to department-related issues and change in regime, the process of land acquisition for the initiative was stalled. In 2017, the

2. Ministry of Civil Aviation gave the agencies the necessary approvals and sanctions to acquire land. TheAAI will get around 593.77 acres of land in the Mangari, Bikunthpur, Karmi, Ghamhapur Karmi, Sagunaha, and Pura Raghunathpur villages. The underpass, however, is a latest initiative and is being hailed as innovative. This enterprise comes amid a variety of projects being undertaken by the NHAI to modernise highway infrastructure. Some of the recent, more prominent ones include the Eastern Peripheral Expressway – a 6-lane expressway meant to decongest the National Capital Region by diverting vehicles plying towards cities surrounding New Delhi away from the Capital city; and, the Delhi- Meerut Expressway – a 14-lane expressway meant to decongest the area between Delhi and Meerut and reduce pollution levels.