Mumbai: Maharashtra’s biggest highway project, the 701-km-long Samruddhi Mahamarg, will be fully open to the public on Thursday, June 5. The last 76-km part of the road, from Igatpuri in Nashik to Amane in Thane, will be launched. This expressway is expected to be a major breakthrough, cutting the travel time between Mumbai and Nagpur to just seven hours.

The Samruddhi Mahamarg, officially called the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, was planned during Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s first term in 2016.

This is a rare greenfield expressway, made from scratch, and will serve as a high-speed route between Mumbai — the financial capital of Maharashtra — and Nagpur, the winter capital. The expressway will reduce the long travel time between the two cities to only seven hours.

The entire project cost Rs 55,335 crore and required more than 8,800 hectares of land, taken from nearly 24,000 farmers across 10 districts. The first part of this six-lane road, which can be widened to eight lanes, was........

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