FCC

Hyderabad to have India’s longest highway tunnel road soon

2022-05-05

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 R Municipal Minister KT Rama Rao directed officials to investigate the possibility of an underground tunnel to avoid any tree felling.