AURIC Aurangabad (Shendra-Bidkin) Connectivity: Airports, Expressways, Rail and Roads

Airports

AURIC's only nearby air link is the existing domestic airport at Chikalthana on the eastern edge of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) city. AURIC is only a 10-minute drive from Aurangabad International Airport, though the airport is not currently an international facility in practice — Aurangabad Airport primarily handles domestic flights within India, with travellers typically connecting to international flights from major hubs like Mumbai or Delhi.

The airport carries a single terminal: it is located at Chikalthana, about 5.5 km east of the city centre and 11 km from the railway station, owned and operated by the Airports Authority of India, with one passenger terminal covering 190,000 square feet and two aerobridges. Renaming has been under discussion for years — in December 2025 the Government of India and Ministry of Civil Aviation permitted the name Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Airport, but because this differed from the original state proposal, the Airports Authority of India put the renaming on hold. Expansion work is in progress: the Maharashtra government approved land acquisition for about 139 acres with notifications issued in early 2025, to help handle larger aircraft and increase flights.

Expressways and National/State Highways

AURIC's road connectivity today rests on the existing state and national highway grid. AURIC is connected by 3 National Highways and 4 State Highways, and the Shendra node itself is located 17 km from Aurangabad on Jalna road towards the east of the city.

Pune–Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Expressway (proposed/under DPR)

The long-discussed expressway to Pune remains in the pre-construction stage. The 225 km Pune-Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) Expressway by MSIDC is a proposed 6-lane access-controlled highway through Paithan and Ahmednagar, to be developed under Bharatmala Pariyojna; its DPR has been finalised but not made public, and the project was originally proposed by NHAI before being transferred to MSIDC. Land acquisition started in December 2022 after NHAI's notification 3(A) covering 24 villages, but tenders for construction had not yet been invited as of this September 2024 update. More recent figures put the project at a total length of 245.9 km in two phases — Phase I covering 53.4 km from Kharadi Junction to Shirur Bypass with a 6-lane elevated highway and a 4-lane at-grade road with metro provision, and Phase II a 192.5 km greenfield 6-lane expressway from Shirur Bypass to the Samruddhi Expressway at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. In November 2025, the Maharashtra cabinet infrastructure committee, chaired by CM Devendra Fadnavis, approved the Pune-Shirur highway along with two major six-lane corridors in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district. This will link to the under-construction 701 km Samruddhi Mahamarg (Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway), and is expected to cut travel time between the cities from 4-5 hours to about 2 hours.

Shendra-Bidkin-Dhoregaon greenfield corridor (approved, land acquisition stage)

A dedicated six-lane link connecting AURIC's two nodes and onward to the Pune Expressway was approved in late 2025. A 32.8 km six-lane stretch was approved between Shendra Industrial Estate and Bidkin Industrial Estate, and another 26 km six-lane road from Bidkin to Dhoregaon linking directly with the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar-Pune highway, with officials instructed to start land acquisition immediately. A later update described the same corridor with slightly different segment lengths: the Maharashtra government approved a new 6-lane greenfield highway connecting Shendra DMIC to Bidkin (Phase 1, 35.8 km) and Bidkin to Dhoregaon (Phase 2, 34.8 km), a total of 70.6 km, with ₹745 crore approved for land acquisition, to support growing industrial zones including Shendra, Bidkin and Waluj, with construction funding proposed through AIIB and the New Development Bank. A related ring road has also been flagged: survey and land acquisition were approved for a 67 km, 6-lane greenfield ring road connecting Shendra, Bidkin and Waluj industrial areas. As of early 2026, none of these corridors is complete; all are at the approval / land-acquisition stage.

Industry bodies have also pushed for a dedicated Shendra-Bidkin link and other works for years: a 2023 memorandum from the Chamber of Marathwada Industries and Agriculture flagged pending works including a double-decker flyover and metro from Shendra to Chikalthana to Waluj, the Auric Shendra-to-Bidkin highway, speeding up the Greenfield Expressway to Pune, and development of Autram Ghat, noting there is no alternative to Jalna Road for industrial traffic. Separately, an earlier (2019) plan for a direct highway between the two nodes described a new highway connecting Shendra and Bidkin, about 40 km apart, with alignment agreed between NHAI and AITL, to be built in two phases: a new road connecting Shendra to Zalta meeting a four-lane under-construction bypass, an expansion of the existing Paithan road to four lanes, and a four-lane, 34 km greenfield stretch in the second phase. That plan appears to have since been superseded by the larger six-lane greenfield corridor approved in 2025.

Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridor

AURIC is served by the existing Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad) railway station rather than a rail line running directly through the industrial city. The Aurangabad railway station is 19.0 km away from the Shendra node. The station (station code AWB) is located on the Secunderabad-Manmad section of the Nanded Division of South Central Railway, with rail connectivity to Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, and connections to Nanded, Parli, Nagpur, Nizamabad, Nasik, Pune, Kurnool, Renigunta, Erode, Madurai, Bhopal, Gwalior, Vadodara and Narsapur.

AURIC's promotional material frequently links the project to the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), which forms the backbone of the wider Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor rather than a line built specifically for AURIC. The DFC is a high-speed rail freight line connecting Delhi-NCR to Mumbai's major ports, JNPT and Mumbai Port Trust, giving DMIC's industrial zones streamlined access to domestic and international markets. At the national level, the Dedicated Freight Corridor is now operational in some segments, significantly reducing transit times for goods, but Aurangabad/AURIC sits within the broader 150 km-wide DMIC influence band around the corridor rather than directly astride the freight tracks — a band spanning 150 kilometers wide on both sides of the freight corridor has been identified as the Influence Region proposed to be developed as DMIC.

Metro / Rapid Transit Proposals

There is no operational or under-construction metro or RRTS line serving AURIC or Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city as of early 2026. A city metro has been raised repeatedly as an industry demand rather than a sanctioned project: the October 2023 CMIA memorandum to the Union Minister for Road Transport listed a double decker flyover and metro from Shendra to Chikalthana to Waluj among pending asks, and a related delegation gave the minister newspaper clippings highlighting the delay in construction of the new expressway, metro project, long flyovers, and the Autram Ghat tunnel. Separately, an elevated road-and-metro provision is being built into the Pune-side of the Pune–Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Expressway (Kharadi–Shirur stretch), where a 7.4 km elevated corridor will be built with coordination between MahaMetro and MSRDC to support both road and metro operations — but this is on the Pune end of the corridor, not within AURIC itself. No dedicated mass-transit line has been announced for the Shendra-Bidkin nodes themselves.

Ports and Dry Ports

AURIC has no seaport of its own; its closest logistics gateway is an inland container facility. AURIC is connected by 3 National Highways and 4 State Highways, and the dry port of Jalna, managed by JNPT, is less than 40 km from the industrial hub. The same distance is cited elsewhere: AURIC is around 40 kilometres from JNPT's dry port and container terminal at Jalna, giving accessibility to India's largest seaport and making it an attractive destination for export-based industry. The actual coastal seaports — JNPT and Mumbai Port — remain several hundred kilometres away by road/rail; AURIC's export logistics for now depend on this Jalna ICD plus road/rail haulage to the Mumbai ports.

Internal Road Network within AURIC

Trunk roads inside the two nodes have been built as part of AURIC's plug-and-play infrastructure rollout, funded separately from the wider highway projects above. Central government funding approvals show the scale of this internal work: for Shendra, GoI approved tender packages for infrastructure components worth ₹1,533 crore, with major trunk infrastructure packages completed; for Bidkin, GoI approved infrastructure packages worth ₹6,414.21 crore to be developed in three phases, and trunk works for Sector A (10.32 sq km) have been completed. Earlier project financing documents itemised these internal works: of a sanctioned ₹6,880 crore, ₹3,000 crore came from the DMIC Trust with the balance raised by AITL through land sales, covering roads (₹773 crore), electrical ducts and towers (₹933 crore), power (₹736 crore), water treatment plants (₹548 crore), area landscaping (₹538 crore) and storm water drainage (₹493 crore). Bidkin itself was formally handed over only recently: the Prime Minister dedicated AURIC Bidkin to the nation on 29th September 2024, following the earlier dedication of AURIC Shendra on 7th September 2019.