DND Flyway
Delhi–Noida Direct Flyway
Also known as DND and Delhi–Noida Toll Bridge
9.2 km
Open
2 states
Expressway
Route
DND Flyway runs 9.2 km from Maharani Bagh (Ring Road), Delhi to Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
Crosses Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
Through Delhi and Noida.
Why it matters
The DND is the shortest way between south Delhi and Noida, and it is what made Noida practical as an office and IT city — thousands of people who live in Delhi work across the river and use it twice a day. It also fed a whole chain of newer roads: from its Noida end you can run straight down the Noida–Greater Noida Expressway and on to the Yamuna Expressway toward Agra. As one of India's earliest public–private road projects, its long toll fight also shaped how later road contracts were written.
History
The DND Flyway was one of India's first modern tollways, built by a private company to link south Delhi with Noida across the Yamuna river. Before it existed, anyone going from south Delhi to Noida had to loop far north through Nizamuddin or east through Ashram and Mayur Vihar. It opened in 2001 and quickly became the main road for Noida's office crowd, carrying lakhs of vehicles a day. The deal that built it let the private company collect toll until it had earned back its money plus a return, but campaigners argued the sums never seemed to end. After years of court battles, the Allahabad High Court ruled in October 2016 that using it should be free, and it has been toll-free ever since.
Good to know
- "DND" stands for Delhi–Noida Direct.
- One of India's first privately built and operated toll roads.
- Eight lanes wide where it crosses the Yamuna floodplain.
- Toll-free since October 2016 after a court ruling.
- A link road connects it to Mayur Vihar in east Delhi.
- It was built under a build-own-operate-transfer contract — the company paid to build it and was meant to earn the money back from tolls.
- Only 9.2 km long, but one of the busiest roads in the Delhi region.
Timeline
- 1998Construction starts under a build-own-operate-transfer deal with a private company
- 2001Opened to traffic in February
- 2008The 1.5 km Mayur Vihar link road opens
- 2016Became toll-free after an Allahabad High Court order (October)
Key junctions
- Maharani Bagh / Ashram (Delhi) — western end, joining Delhi's Ring Road
- Mayur Vihar link — branch to and from east Delhi
- Film City / Sector 18, Noida — eastern end, at Noida's main office and shopping district
Engineering highlights
- Yamuna bridge — the eight-lane bridge over the river and its floodplain that is the heart of the flyway
- Mayur Vihar link — a 1.5 km branch carriageway, opened in 2008, that joins the flyway to east Delhi without disturbing the main flow
On the road
It is free to use and takes only about ten minutes end to end when clear, but weekday mornings toward Noida and evenings back to Delhi are slow, and the Ashram/Maharani Bagh end is the usual bottleneck. Two-wheelers are allowed, and there are no toll booths to stop at any more.