Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated phase one of the Margalla Avenue project on Tuesday. While the ceremony was big enough to warrant a speech from the PM himself, the current construction is less than half of the project’s total plans.

The plan for an expressway right under the Margalla mountains was part of the city’s original master plan developed in 1960.

The project went through dozens of phases of being proposed, discussed then put on the back burner again. In April 2021, Prime Minister Imran Khan performed the ground breaking ceremony of the project.

The Margalla Avenue is supposed to be another major east-west direction road in the capital that hopes to take the burden off the Srinagar Highway, the only other expressway in the similar direction.

The Margalla Avenue will have six lanes and will join Sangjani on the GT road at the western side of the city to Bharakahu on the eastern side. The total length of the project will be around 35 km and a new bypass is being constructed at Bharakahu to connect it with Murree Road.

Work on the bypass has already begun. The bypass was also in the news after two labourers died after a pillar collapse this February.

The part innuagurated by PM Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday is the western part of the project. This part is 10.4 km long and has now connected GT Road to sector D-12. Work is now on going to connect this to sector E-11, to the south east of D-12.

The main advantage of the section inaugurated on Tuesday will be taking pressure off the Srinagar Highway. People inside Islamabad will be able to reach GT road in a few minutes instead of taking a long detour. This also means an alternate path to Islamabad’s airport and to the new housing sectors cropping up in the east, that will accommodate the city’s expanding population in the future.

The cost of the completed section was announced to be Rs2.69 billion although earlier estimates had put the cost closer to 4 billion.