November 19, 2018
In northern India, the second and final segment of the Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE) in the country’s state of Haryana was officially opened to traffic. This expressway measures 84.3 miles (135.6 kilometers) altogether in length and encompasses a total of six lanes (three in each direction).
Both WPE and the 84-mile (135-kilometer)-long Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE), which passes through both Haryana and its neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, were built to jointly form a ring around the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi to help alleviate the considerably heavy traffic congestion within that Indian city and union territory. (The NCT of Delhi, which contains India’s capital of New Delhi, ranks second only to the Tokyo region in Japan as the largest metropolitan area in the world in terms of population.) EPE was officially completed about six months before the formal debut of the remaining portion of WPE.
The first part of WPE to be finished was a 32.9-mile (53-kilometer) stretch between the town of Manesar and the city of Palwal. This section of WPE was inaugurated in 2016 by Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister for road transport and highways.
WPE’s final segment, covering about 51.4 miles (83 kilometers) between Manesar and the village of Kundli, was opened during a ceremony held at the part of the route near Sultanpur Villeage (located in the vicinity of the city of Gurgaon). Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, presided at the ceremony.
That day’s edition of the Indian Express reported on the high level of enthusiasm about the completion of WPE (also known as the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway). This newspaper noted, “For the past two weeks, every conversation in Gurgaon’s Sultanpur village has centered around the inauguration of the Kundli-Manesar stretch of the Western Peripheral Expressway by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today.”
The Indian Express further stated, “While some residents spend their evenings at tea stalls, eagerly discussing what it would be like to see the Prime Minister from up close and their expectations from the expressway itself, others occasionally visit the spot where the event is being held to see the flurry of activity amid last-minute preparations.”
Photo Credit: Mettle30 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE), please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Peripheral_Expressway
Transportation History 
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