Expressways of India. Expressways are the highest class of roads in India. As of December 2024, the total length of expressways in India was , with  under construction. As per NHAI and Indian Roads Congress, expressways are access controlled highways with a divided carriageway, designed for high speed vehicular movement and heavy traffic. There is a central reservation or median that separates the flow travelling in opposite directions. Entrance and exits are provided only by grade separated interchanges. The interchanges may be system interchanges (such as cloverleaf, three-way, trumpet) used with other national or state highways or be service interchanges (such as SPDI) used with smaller roads. In contrast, National highways may or may not be divided by a median and may or may not have access control. Some highways, built by State Governments, which may be fully access controlled or may be limited access controlled, are declared or named as expressways by their respective State Governments.

As of 2024, the longest expressway in India is the partially-opened Delhi–Mumbai Expressway (Phase-III) at , which was opened in December 18, 2024, and the widest expressway is the Delhi – Gurgaon section of the Dwarka Expressway with 16 lanes, which was opened in 2024.

Development and timeline 
Greenfield Expressways in India are designed as 12-lane wide Expressways with the initial construction of 8 lanes with maximum speed set as 120 km/h for all type of vehicles. Land for 4-lane future expansion is reserved in the center of the expressways. Greenfield Expressways are designed to avoid inhabited areas and go through new alignments to bring development to new areas and to reduce land acquisition costs and construction timelines. The Delhi–Mumbai Expressway is an example of a new 12-lane approach with initial 8-lane construction.

Bharatmala is an ecosystem of road development which includes tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded road and highways project of the Government of India with a target of constructing 83,677 km of new highways over the next five years, was started in 2017 as well as conversion of 4 lane highways into 6 lane Brownfield expressways & some state highways into NH/NE. Phase I of the Bharatmala project involves the construction of 34,800 km of highways (including the remaining projects under NHDP) at an estimated cost of ₹5.35 lakh crore by 2021–22.

Brownfield National Highway Project is the widening/re-development of existing National Highways. The upgradation of highway is a Brownfield Expressway Project which has high traffic demand and is a part of both rural and urban setup. The upgradation is carried from 4 Lane to 6 Lane on EPC mode such as NH-709A. 43,000 km state highways have been converted to National Highways in last 8 years.

The majority of the investment required for constructing expressways comes from the central government. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are the only states which are investing in building expressways through dedicated expressway corporations.

The National Highways Authority of India operating under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will be in-charge of the construction and maintenance of expressways. The National Highways Development Project by the government of India aims to expand the country's current expressway network and plans to add an additional 18,637 km of greenfield expressways by 2025 apart from building 4 lane greenfield national highways of 50,000 km length. Currently NHDP Phase-6 and NHDP Phase-7 construction is going on along with Bharatmala project.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is set to unveil a plan for constructing 50,000 km of new expressways by 2037 in the first 100 days of the new government.The program, replacing Bharatmala, aligns with Vision 2047 and aims to reduce logistic costs and modernize road infrastructure.

Economic Corridors/Industrial Corridors
Economic Corridors of India  or Industrial Corridors of India, 44 corridors  were identified and  will be taken up in phase-I, they exclude 6 National Corridors, they include:  66  inter-corridors (IC) & 116  feeder routes (FR) were identified for Bharatmala.

List of 44 economic corridors (EC):

 EC-1: Mumbai-Kolkata 
 EC-2: Mumbai-Kanyakumari
 EC-3: Amritsar-Jamnagar
 EC-4: Kandla-Sagar
 EC-5: Agra-Mumbai 
 EC-6: Pune-Vijayawada 
 EC-7: Raipur-Dhanbad
 EC-8: Ludhiana-Ajmer
 EC-9: Surat-Nagpur
 EC-10: Hyderabad-Panaji 
 EC-11: Jaipur-Indore 
 EC-12: Solapur-Nagpur 
 EC-13: Sagar-Varanasi 
 EC-14: Kharagpur-Siliguri 
 EC-15: Raipur-Visakhapatnam 
 EC-16: Delhi-Lucknow 
 EC-17: Chennai-Kurnool 
 EC-18: Indore-Nagpur 
 EC-19: Chennai-Madurai 
 EC-20: Mangaluru-Raichur
 EC-21: Tuticorin-Cochin
 EC-22: Solapur-Bellary-Gooty
 EC-23: Hyderabad-Aurangabad 
 EC-24: Delhi-Kanpur
 EC-25: Tharad-Phalodi 
 EC-26: Nagaur-Mandi Dabwali 
 EC-27: Sagar-Lucknow 
 EC-28: Sambalpur-Paradeep 
 EC-29: Amreli-Vadodra 
 EC-30: Godhra-Khargone 
 EC-31: Sambalpur-Ranchi 
 EC-32: Bengaluru-Malappuram
 EC-33: Raisen-Pathariya
 EC-34: Bengaluru-Mangaluru 
 EC-35: Chittaurgarh-Indore 
 EC-36: Bilaspur-New Delhi
 EC-37: Solapur-Mahabubnagar 
 EC-38: Bengaluru-Nellore
 EC-39: Ajmer-Udaipur 
 EC-40: Sirsa-Delhi 
 EC-41: Sirohi-Beawar 
 EC-42: Jaipur-Agra 
 EC-43: Pune-Aurangabad 
 EC-44: North East Corridor

Timeline of total length of Expressways

State-wise overview of expressways

List of operational expressways by state, as of March 2023:

Expressways by NHAI
This list contains expressways built by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and declared or named as expressways by Government of India.
These Expressways are run through one or more states or UTs; some of these are designated with "NE" tag while some are not but both of the types are National Expressways.

Expressways designated with "NE" 

Spur Expressways are branch expressways from other expressways.

Economic corridor expressways
These expressways (all built by NHAI) are part of Economic corridors (EC) and have been declared or named as Expressway by Government of India.

Other inter-state expressways
The following list refers to the expressways which passing through more than one state/UT and connect places from different states/UTs. Bypass or spur expressways are not included in following list.

Other state expressways by NHAI
The following list refers to the expressways built by NHAI to connect areas within the state. Bypass or spur expressways are not included in following list.

Bypass expressways
Bypass Expressways such as ring roads, bypass roads, freeways and elevated roads are used to bypass city core traffic. These are declared as expressways by Government of India. These direct heavy traffic to the outskirts freeing city roads of traffic. This also allows outside traffic to directly pass the city instead of going through it further limiting traffic within a city.

Expressways declared by state
These expressways are built by State Governments in their respective states and declared as expressways by that State Government, not by Government of India. Most of these highways contain characteristics of expressways.

Other planned expressways

Proposed expressways

See also 

 Ring roads in India
 Ring roads in India

 Similar rail development
 Future of rail transport in India, rail development
 List of high-speed railway lines in India

 Similar roads development
 Bharatmala
 Diamond Quadrilateral, Subsumed in Bharatmala
 Golden Quadrilateral, completed national road development connectivity older scheme
 National Highways Development Project, Subsumed in Bharatmala
 North–South and East–West Corridor, Subsumed in Bharatmala
 India–China Border Roads, Subsumed in Bharatmala
 Setu Bharatam, river road bridge development in India
 Char Dham Highway, a project under MoRTH

 Similar ports and river transport development
 Indian rivers interlinking project
 List of national waterways in India
 Sagar Mala project, national water port development connectivity scheme

 Similar air transport development
 Indian Human Spaceflight Programme
 UDAN, national airport development connectivity scheme

 Highways in India
 List of national highways in India
 List of expressways in Maharashtra

 General
 Transport in India
 Water transport in India
 Iron and steel industry in India

References

External links 
 

 
Roads in India