ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Senate was informed on Friday that 28,000 saplings would be planted along the signal-free Islamabad Expressway to keep the surroundings environment-friendly, clean and green.
“CDA has planned to plant 28,000 environment-friendly species in the Green Belt of Islamabad Expressway in which Shisham and Kachnar are main species,” the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed said during the question-hour in the Upper House of the Parliament.
The minister said that a total of 319 trees were removed from the site of under construction signal free Islamabad Expressway which included 256 trees of Paper Mulberry that were not considered environment-friendly.
Sheikh Aftab said that the project was being executed under the PM’s special package to ensure smooth flow of traffic at the important artery.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on June 30, 2015 inaugurated the signal-free corridor of Islamabad highway which will cost about Rs21.81 billion.
Under the project, the 24-kilometer Expressway from Zero Point to GT Road Rawat will be converted into a signal free corridor besides addition of lanes to ease traffic congestion.
In the first phase, four-kilometer portion of the Expressway between Zero Point and Faizabad interchanges would be widened to 10 lanes. The stretch between Faizabad and the Airport Chowk would be expanded in the second phase and the remaining portion up to Rawat would be catered for in the third phase.
The project involves construction of two overhead passages and seven underpasses for an access to housing societies located along the road. Of five lanes on either sides as designed in the project, three would be flexible and the rest two rigid for movement of heavy vehicles.
