The Mumbai - Pune Expressway has been conceived to connect Mumbai and Pune which are the two important traffic nodes in the State of Maharashtra. With an accelerated pace of industrialization Pune has become an important industrial centre of national importance. Presently, the two cities Mumbai and Pune are connected by National Highway NH-4 which runs from Mumbai to Bangalore. The inter urban travel between Mumbai and Pune has grown to an enormous proportion. The distance between Mumbai and Pune is 176 km. It generally takes about 5 hours to cover this distance due to various bottlenecks such as inadequate width, mixed traffic, congested towns like Panvel, Khopoli, Khandala and Lonavale, besides traffic jams in Borghat. The traffic at Panvel as per traffic data of year 1989 is about 60,000 Passenger Car Units (PCUs) and the same was estimated to grow to 107000 PCUs in 1997 - 1998. Considering this situation there has been a felt need for construction of an expressway between Mumbai and Pune to boost the economy as well as to ensure safety of road users.