ISLAMABAD: The National Highway Authority has approved Rs43 billion for dualisation and improvement of the Indus Highway (N-55) and constructionofamotorwaybetween Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan.

The two projects were approved at a NHA executive board meeting on Thursday.

According to the plan, the 128km section from Sarai Gambila to Kohat of the Indus Highway will be reconstructed and dualised.

At present, the Indus Highway is a one-lane road.

Three more lanes would be constructed to make it a fourlane highway, the meeting was informed. The project would cost Rs30bn.

Similarly, a 49km, four-lane motorway with fence on both sides from Kohat to D.I. Khan will be constructed at a cost of Rs13bn.

Giving details of the two projects, NHA chief Shahid Ashraf Tarar said the additional carriageway between Sarai Gambila and Kohat included construction of 26 bridges with one major bridge on the Kurrum River.

The Indus Highway is 1,264kmlong and runs along the river, connecting Karachi with Kohat and Peshawar through Dera Ghazi Khan and D.L Khan.

The highway, being the second largest road connection after the G.T. Road, provides an alternative north-south link while traversing 491km in Sindh, 360km in Punjab and 396 kilometres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The highway, however, is now facing difficulty in coping with the increasing traffic load, especially heavy vehicles.

This has resulted in shifting some of its traffic load to the G.T. Road (N-5), causing frequent traffic jams there. The dualisation of N-55 would provide safe, quick and more efficient movement of both passenger and commercial traffic, NHA spol
The meeting was also told that theproposedmotorwaybetween Yarik, near D.L Khan, and Sagu, near Kohat, carried added significance as it would eventually become part of the under-construction western alignment of the CPEC.