Tricity Highway Push

For years, anyone driving between Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula and Zirakpur has known the drill: bumper-to-bumper traffic at the Zirakpur-Patiala light point, long queues near Airport Road, and unpredictable delays that turn a 20-minute trip into an hour. That's changing fast. The Centre has rolled out a Rs 5,278-crore National Highway package covering three major projects designed to decongest the Tricity and dramatically improve access to Chandigarh International Airport, Mohali's Aerocity and the wider region.

At the centre of this push is the newly operational 31.23-km Zirakpur-Kurali Greenfield Highway. Built under the Bharatmala Pariyojana scheme, this corridor opened to traffic on December 22, 2025 after facing repeated delays tied to land acquisition and compensation disputes with local landowners. The highway connects IT Chowk near Chandigarh's Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport with the Kurali-Chandigarh Road, giving long-distance traffic heading to Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir a way to bypass the crowded Airport Road entirely.

The second piece of the package is the 19.20-km Zirakpur Bypass, a six-lane project pegged at roughly Rs 1,878 crore. This bypass will connect NH-7 (Zirakpur-Patiala) with NH-5 (Zirakpur-Parwanoo), pulling through-traffic away from the densely populated core of Zirakpur. Rounding off the trio is the 10.30-km Chandigarh Airport-Aerocity Greenfield Highway, an approximately Rs 1,464-crore extension of NH-205A that will directly link Chandigarh International Airport with Mohali's Aerocity and the fast-growing residential belts nearby.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the completed Zirakpur-Kurali stretch and laid foundation stones for the remaining two corridors on July 17, 2026, signalling the government's intent to push these projects through on a firm timeline. Officials involved with the region's infrastructure planning have pointed out that a rapid development of Mohali, Zirakpur and Panchkula around Chandigarh has significantly increased traffic pressure, prompting the ring-road discussions that eventually led to this package.

Local residents and commuters are cautiously optimistic. In an Open House discussion carried by a regional daily, one respondent noted that diverting heavy and long-distance vehicles away from crowded areas like Zirakpur and Panchkula will ease pressure on major highways and local roads. Another commuter pointed out that the six-lane bypass will serve as an alternative route for vehicles heading towards Himachal Pradesh, reducing load on the Ambala-Chandigarh highway and Zirakpur's busy intersections.

Why does this matter to homebuyers? Better airport access, reduced congestion, and faster regional travel are expected to strengthen growth in residential, commercial, and logistics-driven real estate across the Tricity. These three projects also form part of the larger 244-km Tricity Ring Road vision, which aims to permanently reroute inter-state traffic away from the urban core of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula.

For DLF, which has an established residential footprint across the Tricity — from The Valley and The Valley Gardens in Panchkula's Sector 3 to Hyde Park Estate in Mullanpur's New Chandigarh township — improved regional connectivity strengthens the long-term investment case for buyers already eyeing these foothill and airport-adjacent addresses. Faster, signal-free access to Chandigarh Airport and reduced dependence on choke points like Zirakpur's traffic lights add tangible value to homes positioned along or near these new corridors, even for projects a little further out toward Panchkula and Pinjore.

Buyers evaluating a purchase in this belt should track construction progress on the Zirakpur Bypass and the Airport-Aerocity corridor, since both remain under active construction with expected multi-year completion windows. As with any infrastructure-linked real estate story, the value uplift tends to build gradually — first through improved commute experience, then through broader commercial and retail activity that follows better connectivity.