Drivers heading from ISKCON junction towards Sanand on Ahmedabad’s SG Highway can now skip three signal-controlled junctions. A six-lane elevated corridor between ISKCON and the Sanand flyover opened to traffic on November 9 after Union Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurated it, DeshGujarat reported. The structure cost about Rs 464 crore, a figure also given by Akila News and Gujarat First.
The corridor is 4.03 km long and 26.8 metres wide. Of that length, 2,940 metres is viaduct and 1,090 metres is approach road. It carries through traffic over the Karnavati Club, Prahladnagar and YMCA junctions, where vehicles on the ground-level road still stop at signals.
Karnavati Club, Prahladnagar and YMCA signals bypassed
This part of SG Highway mixes two kinds of traffic. Office-goers use it to reach the commercial towers around Prahladnagar and Corporate Road. Trucks and buses use the same lanes to reach Sanand’s industrial estates and the Sarkhej side of the city. Until now both kinds of traffic queued at the same signals.
With the elevated road open, vehicles going straight through between ISKCON and the Sanand flyover can stay on the deck. Ramps let traffic leave for the Karnavati Club, Prahladnagar and YMCA areas, DeshGujarat reported in October. Local trips to shops, offices and housing societies along the stretch still use the ground-level road and the service roads. Those service roads are 7 to 14 metres wide and have been whitetopped (resurfaced with concrete).
The project also added 5,880 metres of noise barriers and 297 streetlights, according to the DeshGujarat report on the opening. The noise barriers matter for the residential towers that sit close to the highway on this stretch.
A July target that slipped to November
The Union road transport ministry approved the corridor in March 2023. Minister Nitin Gadkari announced it then on NH-147 at a sanctioned cost of Rs 530.20 crore, DeshGujarat reported at the time. In May this year the opening was expected by July 15. By October the target had moved to Diwali. Gujarat First reported on November 4 that the corridor was ready and that Shah would open it the day after Diwali, which is what happened.
The opening was one of about 30 works launched or inaugurated in Shah’s Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency that day, worth more than Rs 1,400 crore in all, Akila News reported. Others included keys for more than 9,000 houses and shops at Ramapir no Tekro in Vadaj under the PM Awas Yojana and a foundation stone for a 200 MLD water treatment plant at Jaspur.
For commuters who drive the full stretch, the gain is the three junctions now skipped. No agency has yet published travel-time or traffic-count figures for the new road.
Sources: DeshGujarat, Akila News, Gujarat First
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.