India, Aug. 2 -- The Bandikui-Jaipur Expressway - a part of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway - has been thrown open to the public, significantly slashing travel time between Delhi-NCR and Jaipur in Rajasthan. The new route, opened for commuters on July 15, after safety checks, is expected to reduce the travel time between Delhi and Jaipur to just two-and-a-half to three hours under normal conditions, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officials said. Earlier, commuters had to use the Agra-Jaipur highway which is a four-lane road, with small villages and towns on both sides of its 69 km stretch. The highway is congested and commuters had to spend around 1.5 hours to cover the 69 km stretch, officials added. NHAI officials on Friday said that around 15,000 vehicles are now using the newly constructed Jaipur-Bandikui spur of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway daily, which was made operational in the middle of last month. The main advantage of using this newly constructed 67-km-long spur is that it has significantly reduced the travel time between Delhi and Jaipur. Highway officials said that the distance between IGI Airport in Delhi and Bagrana Crossing in Jaipur can now be covered in around 3 hours, while using the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway. To be sure, when the Sohna to Dausa section of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway was inaugurated on February 12, 2023, union transport minister Nitin Gadkari had announced that commuters from Delhi and Gurugram will be able to cover this distance in three hours. However, with the section between Bandikui and Jaipur not ready at that time, this objective of the three-hour commute between Delhi and Jaipur could not be fulfilled. According to NHAI officials, the 67-km-long high speed corridor has also reduced the distance between the two cities by around 12 km since people now don't need to travel to Bandhrej toll plaza in Dausa from where commuters had to take the congested Jaipur-Agra highway, which considerably slowed down the movement of vehicles. "The new spur between Bandikui and Jaipur was opened for traffic trial in the first week of July and after a week, the tolling was started. A lot of traffic from the Old Delhi-Jaipur Highway has moved to the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway after the opening of this high-speed road. We are expecting the traffic to increase significantly after August 15 as the new tolling fee system kicks in whereby annual fees of Rs 3,000 will be charged from commuters for a fixed number of trips," said a senior NHAI official from the Jaipur office of the highway authority. The official said that as only two to three tolls need to be crossed on the entire stretch of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway from Jaipur to Sohna in Gurugram, and the fees would not be more than Rs.45 for cars and other non-commercial vehicles, which opt the for annual scheme, which at present is around Rs.350. "Not only is time saved using the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway but we have also improved wayside facilities considerably and ample parking and lodging facilities have been created for truckers as well. This spur will definitely move more commercial vehicles away from the Old Delhi-Jaipur Highway, reducing congestion and pollution as well," he said. "For us, it used to be a day's trip to Jaipur," said Rakesh Chauhan, a Gurugram-based software developer. "Last Sunday, we took the new expressway on a whim, thinking it was still on trial. But to our surprise, it was fully functional. No city traffic, no toll queues-just smooth driving. We left home at 6:45am and were at my brother's place in Jaipur by 9:30am," he said....