Hyderabad will have the country’s longest highway road tunnel, stretching approximately 10 km from Jubilee Hills Road 45 Junction to Banjara Hills Road 12 Junction.
The proposed four-lane tunnel will be dug using a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) and will run from the KBR Park junction to the NFCL Junction in Punjagutta.
With the State government entrusting the project to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the civic body is conducting a feasibility study and preparing a detailed project report (DPR) by enlisting the help of international technical consultants.
At 9.20 km in length, the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Tunnel connects Kashmir to the rest of India and is the longest in India. In Mumbai, a plan to dig a longer tunnel was never realised.
When the proposal was approved a few years ago, the Centre government informed that the GHMC should not touch the trees inside the park’s first boundary wall that fall under the eco-sensitive zones (ESZ). The ESZ did not apply to the trees outside the second boundary wall.
The Centre government said a few years ago that the GHMC should not touch the trees inside the park’s first boundary wall that fall under the ESZ when it approved the proposal. The ESZ did not apply to the trees outside of the second boundary wall.
In light of this, Municipal Minister KT Rama Rao directed officials to investigate the possibility of an underground tunnel to avoid any tree felling.
Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) was conceived to achieve signal-free intersections, allowing faster movement between important destinations across the core city, according to GHMC officials.
Several grade separators, including the flyover on Road No 45, MindSpace Junction, Biodiversity Junction, and the cable-stayed bridge at Durgam Cheruvu, have been built as part of the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP). Even the completion of the SRDP flyovers and cable-stayed bridge has not alleviated daily traffic congestion at several junctions on these road links between Punjagutta and Banjara Hills Road No 12.
Also read: PWD seeks MoEF approval for 8 km mega tunnel road project