Mumbai: Be ready to cough up if you happen to travel on the Mumbai-Pune expressway. Built as the first high speed expressway in the country, it also remains the most expensive stretch to travel.
Partially opened for public transport in 1999, the expressway was constructed at an estimated cost of ₹1,630 crore. Entire stretch of 94.50 km, which connects Navi Mumbai’s Kalamboli with Pune’s Kiwale locality, was dedicated to the nation in 2002.
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However, the toll for travelling on this roadway is set to take you by utter disbelief. A car has to pay the toll of ₹320 for one way (for 94.50km), which makes it the most expensive expressway in the country. One way travel from Delhi to Jaipur (280 km) by car on the Delhi-Mumbai expressway costs around ₹585. This means, a traveller has to pay ₹3.38 per km on Mumbai-Pune expressway against ₹2.08 for travelling on Delhi-Jaipur expressway.
The Mumbai-Pune expressway was built by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), which received a major boost during the regime of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister, cuts the travel time between the two cities to one year from the otherwise three-hour travel time. However, people hardly mind paying extra buck for travelling on the expressway owing to time factor.
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The MSRDC officials say that the toll on the expressway is raised by 6% a year, with a cumulative increase of 18% after every three years. Toll on the road was last revised in April 2023, when it was raised to ₹320 for a private car from ₹270 and ₹495 for vehicles like minibuses and tempos to ₹420.
Toll charge for two-axle vehicles has been revised to ₹685 from the earlier amount of ₹585. Buses, which were earlier used to pay ₹797, are not now paying ₹940. According to officials, the toll charges won’t be altered after the three-year milestone in 2026 and will stay the same until 2030.
