Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway

The Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway is a 63 km six-lane access-controlled corridor connecting Lucknow (UP capital) to Kanpur (UP's major industrial city). Sanctioned in 2018 and constructed by NHAI between 2020 and 2025 at ₹4,700 crore, the expressway opens in phases through early 2025 to relieve the chronically congested NH-27 (formerly NH-25) corridor.

The project's signature engineering feature is an 18 km elevated viaduct over the Ganga floodplain — at the time of construction, India's longest expressway-grade viaduct on a single project (matched only by the Mumbai-Pune Expressway's individual ghat sections). The elevated alignment was chosen to bypass the heavily-cultivated Ganga floodplain villages and to avoid the seasonal flood-zone issues that plagued the original NH-25 alignment.

Design features: 6-lane (3+3) configuration, design speed 100 km/h (lower than 120 km/h on plains-only expressways due to mixed elevated/at-grade alignment), 4 toll plazas, integrated EV charging at every rest area. The expressway cuts Lucknow-Kanpur travel from 4 hours to 50 minutes — a corridor handling 80,000+ vehicles/day.