Speeding down the spanking new Purvanchal Expressway from Lucknow, a big temple dome emerges on the six-lane road at the 239-km mark. It is the ‘Radha Kishan Temple’ in Azamgarh which has been accommodated in the gap between the median of the two flyovers on the expressway, to save the old temple from demolition.
Such sights mark the state’s longest expressway of 341 km which PM Narendra Modi will inaugurate on November 16. It took less than four hours to travel from Lucknow to the eastern tip of the state at Ghazipur. A turn going towards Ayodhya at 80-km point, a turn towards Gorakhpur at 191km, a turn towards Varanasi at the 294-km point and signboards showing the distance to Bihar capital Patna mark the major landmarks of the journey on the expressway and exhibit the ‘political utility’ of the new road ahead of elections.
In fact, one can now travel from Delhi to Ghazipur in about 10 hours, using a troika of expressways from Noida to Agra, Agra to Lucknow and the Purvanchal Expressway.
The Journey
Designed for speeds of 120 kmph, one can drive at 100 kmph presently on the expressway which provides a great driving experience as soon as one steps onto the road from the Chandsarai village in Lucknow. “The traveling experience is great because of good geometrics, extra care has been taken to improve the road markings and night travel makes the road look like an air-strip,” one of the project engineers working on the expressway told News18.
Hectic last-minute work and finishing touches are being given to the road ahead of the inauguration on November 16. Also, none of the fuel stations, toilets or refreshment points are ready yet. So one must pack food, water and ensure to have a tank-full of fuel before the journey.
The expressway does have many added safety features, an upgrade from the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. One, there is lighting with solar back-up on all the 900-odd structures like bridges, railway over-bridges, interchanges, underpasses and culverts, unlike only on the interchanges and toll plazas on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. This makes the ride at night much safer.
Also, the Purvanchal Expressway has metal beam crash barriers not just on the shoulders of both lanes but also on either sides of the median, which makes the expressway far safer to travel on. An engineer explained that the kerbs on the medians have also been designed in a slanted mountable way to ensure that if the vehicles hits a median crash barrier, it won’t topple.
News18 also found anti-glare sheets on the medians all across the curves and turns at the expressway which ensure the headlights of a vehicle on one lane do not blind the driver on the other side. Hectic work was on at the road for plantation on the medians ahead of the inauguration. The installation of crash barriers on the shoulders and the median was also in progress at many points. This is vital to stop the entry of cattle on the expressway which can cause accidents.
News18 spotted just one cattle on the expressway in the entire journey. “We have cattle-catching vehicles, ambulances and police vehicles already stationed on the road,” a project official said.
The other striking feature of the 341-km long expressway is over 400 km of service roads being built on either side for the convenience of people who live in adjacent villages so that they can cross over to either side of the expressway through underpasses and culverts. All these service roads are at a level higher than the flood level to prevent them from submerging in case of heavy rains. Around 80% of these service roads are ready and one can spot work on at full place with JCB cranes and earth-moving equipment deployed to complete them.
The highlight of the road is the 3.2-km long airstrip at Sultanpur where fighter planes can land in case of an emergency and the same will be displayed through a show to be put up by Rafale jets on November 16 in the presence of the Prime Minister. The air-strip stretch was closed on Thursday for trial runs of the air-show and one has to take a small detour to climb on the expressway again after this stretch.
At the 191-km point, a hoarding with Yogi Adityanath’s picture announces it as the point from where a Gorakhpur Link Expressway will branch out to the CM’s backyard of Gorakhpur. But this link road is work in progress and is not ready yet. So is the case with the Balia Link Expressway which will branch out from this road.
The Political Significance
“This one is my project which the Yogi Adityanath government wants to take credit for. My government did the land acquisition, awarded the project to companies and decided the alignment. The new government came and merely changed the project’s name from Samajwadi Purvanchal Expressway to Purvanchal Expressway and has taken 4.5 years to complete it,” former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav told News18 on Tuesday.
Officials in the Yogi Adityanath government said the project was re-tendered in 2017 and the total cost of the project now stands at Rs 22,500 crore which is significantly less than in the Samajwadi Party regime. The PM had laid the foundation stone of the project in 2018 and it has been completed within 3.5 years despite the Covid-19 pandemic, a senior official said.
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Traveling down the expressway, one can cross nine districts and the government feels this project will work in the elections. Six more districts will get linked once the two link expressways to Gorakhpur and Balia get ready.
Purvanchal (east UP) has suffered from poor road connectivity for decades and locals do marvel at the road and how they can reach Lucknow in less than four hours from Ghazipur, almost half the time taken earlier. The signboards on the expressway showing the distance to Patna also exhibit how the expressway is linking UP to Bihar.
The UP government also has plans to set up five industrial corridors near the expressway in an area of 900 hectares and the units will be mostly food-processing ones given the areas adjacent to the expressway are rural. This is expected to create jobs and the project becoming more appeasing to the locals, a BJP leader in the state said.
However, the political history of the state shows no one has won an election after building and showcasing an expressway — like in the case of Mayawati who built the Noida-Agra Expressway or Akhilesh Yadav who built the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. No CM has also won an election consecutively in UP for decades. Yogi Adityanath is trying to change history here in his election bid, with the Purvanchal Expressway being his top offering as an achievement in his term.
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