The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) finally closed the Dasna toll plaza on Sunday morning, 17 years after the toll plaza began operations.
The toll was a major choke point for traffic and forced commuters heading to the Eastern Peripheral Expressway, just 500 metres away, to pay for crossing it
The Ghaziabad district administration said they are building a new 18-lane toll plaza at Pilkhuwa and operations there will commence within a week with new rates.
“The Dasna toll plaza was shutdown from 8am on Sunday. The new toll will now be made operational in one week at Pilkhuwa with 10 lanes initially. The new toll near Chhajarsi village is part of phase III of the Delhi-meerut Expressway. The work on the entire phase 3 stretch is about 96% complete and final week’s work is pending which was hampered due to ongoing monsoon season. We will likely open phase III on August 15,” said RP Singh, project director (NHAI).
The Dasna toll was initiated in 2002 and, according to official estimates, the facility realised about Rs 200 crore from commuters over a span of 17 years.
The entire Dasna toll plaza structure will be dismantled within 3 to 4 days.
Phase III stretches from Dasna to Hapur, a distance of 22 kilometres, having 10 lanes.
For past several months, the Ghaziabad district administration had been demanding closure of the Dasna toll plaza due to traffic congestion and also that the commuters, who wished to move to Eastern Peripheral Expressway, had to pay double toll within a distance of about 500 metres.
The Dasna interchange of the EPE is just 500 metres from the location of the Dasna toll plaza. Hence, the National Highways Authority of India decided to shutdown the toll at Dasna and shift it to Pilkhuwa under the DME project.
The erstwhile Dasna toll plaza catered to about 48,000 passenger car units (PCU) per day while the new toll plaza will cater to about 42,000 PCUs per day.
The new toll plaza has come up just ahead (while going towards Pilkhuwa from Ghaziabad) of the 5km elevated road which will bypass Pilkhuwa town.
As per the recent notification, the new toll rates for the Chijarsi toll plaza for cars for a single journey will now be Rs 70 as against old rate of Rs 35. Likewise, the return journey within 24 hours will cost about Rs 105 at the toll.
The fee for monthly pass for 50 single journeys, within a month, has been fixed at Rs 2,290.
The fee for single journey for commercial vehicles registered within Hapur district will be Rs 35.
The NHAI is also taking up construction of phase II of the DME project from Up-gate to Dasna.
Under the phase II the NHAI initially plans to open the Up-gate to Vijay Nagar stretch to give relief to local commuters. The NHAI plans to open four highway lanes each side of National Highway-9.
The entire phase II from UP-gate to Dasna is over a stretch of 19.2km with 14 lanes, including three expressway lanes each side.
“We need 15 more days to complete the Up-gate to Vijay Nagar stretch as the shifting of high capacity transmission lines is pending near Lal Kuan. We have received shutdown from Railways for one and half hours each on Sunday and Monday. However, the continued rainfall has hampered work,” the project director added.
First Published: Jul 29, 2019 13:26 IST
