Connectivity: GMADA Eco City-4, New Chandigarh & Mohali Aerotropolis Expansion

Airports

The only airport serving this entire corridor is Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport (also called Chandigarh International Airport or Mohali Airport), which is already operational. The International Airport at Mohali offers both domestic and international flights and is also commonly known as Mohali Airport, located in Jheourheri village, on approximately 305 acres. The Mohali Aerotropolis — one of the names under which this expansion is tracked — is built directly around it: the Aerotropolis is located in SAS Nagar (Mohali) district, adjacent to Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, roughly 3 km away.

Passenger traffic is climbing, which is the commercial logic behind the Aerotropolis and Sector 87 commercial-city plans: the airport reached a record 2.8 million passengers in 2025-26, with direct international routes to Canada, UAE and the UK driving NRI demand. Eco City-4 itself, in the Kharar/New Chandigarh belt, is farther from the airport than the Aerotropolis and relies on road links described below rather than direct airport-adjacency.

Expressways and highways

PR-7 Airport Road is the primary arterial tying New Chandigarh, Kharar and the airport together. The road is 8.785 km long and 200 feet wide, running from New Sunny Enclave in Kharar to meet PR-4 road in New Chandigarh, with four lanes and an 80 km/h speed limit, as part of the Greater Chandigarh Master Plan 2031. It also links onward: it improves connectivity between New Chandigarh and other parts of the region, connecting with National Highway 21 and the Grand Trunk Road.

A long-awaited alternate access route is close to completion: for years, reaching the airport required navigating the perennially congested PR-7 or circuitous detours, but that gap is closing. GMADA has set a June 15, 2026 target for the Mohali Airport Link Road, a milestone following a decade-long public interest litigation and multiple High Court hearings.

Regional highway capacity has expanded sharply through 2025–26. The Mohali-Kurali bypass, part of the 31 km six-lane Chandigarh-Ambala Greenfield Expressway, was expected to open by end-November 2025, at a cost of Rs 1,525.3 crore, reducing traffic on Airport Road and providing a direct route to Kurali, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. A related account puts the same corridor's cost near ₹1,400 crore for the 31-km IT Chowk-to-Kurali stretch, intended to decongest Airport Road for traffic heading to Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, targeted to open around December 1.

Further south, NHAI has awarded construction of the Zirakpur-Panchkula bypass (19.2 km) and a 10.3 km spur to the Ambala-Chandigarh expressway, a ₹1,983-crore six-lane project aimed at easing Zirakpur's chronic traffic gridlock. A separate 16.5 km six-lane Zirakpur Ring Road, estimated at ₹1,878 crore and part of the PM Gatishakti National Master Plan, had its bidding process set to begin November 21, aiming to connect Zirakpur with Panchkula and Mohali.

A new bypass corridor has already relieved local pressure: the newly operational Bharatmala corridor, costing around ₹1,400 crore, has significantly eased traffic on Airport Road (PR-7) by diverting heavy vehicles moving from Delhi towards Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Separately, Punjab has committed ₹140 crore for 50 km of road upgrades across four districts, including resurfacing, lane markings and smart traffic management on Airport Road (PR-7).

Within the Aerotropolis corridor, GMADA's own promotional material lists a pipeline of projects — airport terminal expansion, a proposed metro corridor, a Mohali-Ropar expressway, the New Chandigarh extension, ring-road completion and IT City scale-up — each still at the proposal stage. A further greenfield link cited by local sources is a proposed 32 km Greenfield expressway from IT Chowk to Kurali intended to distribute traffic across the Tricity region.

Rail and freight

Mohali has an existing railway station that serves the Airport Road corridor: local property literature notes connectivity to Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, Mohali Railway Station, and direct connectivity to the Mohali-Ambala Greenfield Expressway along this road. No dedicated freight corridor has been announced specifically for Eco City-4, Sector 87 or the Aerotropolis; the nearest strategic freight relevance is that the corridor sits at a highway junction: the corridor sits at the convergence of NH-44 (Delhi-Jammu) and NH-7 (Chandigarh-Ambala), with freight movement in both directions passing through or near this node. No rail freight terminal or dedicated freight corridor project tied to Eco City-4 specifically was found as of July 2026.

Metro / RRTS proposals

A Tricity Metro connecting Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula — which would touch New Chandigarh and the Airport Road belt — has been discussed for over a decade but remains unbuilt. The project was scrapped in 2017 over low financial viability projections, revived in November 2022, and given in-principle central approval in March 2023, with a Detailed Project Report finalised in July 2024.

The approved scope is substantial: the proposed network comprises three elevated corridors with over 50 stations spanning 114 km — 89 km in Phase 1 and 25 km in Phase 2 — estimated to cost Rs 25,000 crore. One New Chandigarh-relevant alignment detail: Line 1, planned at 34 km, would connect ISBT Panchkula to Panchkula Extension via localities including Sultanpur (New Chandigarh), Kurali, Sarangpur, Khuda Lahora, PGI and Panjab University.

Despite formal clearances, physical progress has stalled. The project remains off-track even 13 years after it was first conceived, despite multiple feasibility studies, revised proposals and committee formations, with no construction activity in sight as of December 2025. In early 2026 the project faced fresh political friction: Punjab Governor and UT Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria raised concerns in January 2026 about feasibility and cost, and proposed extending the network to Ambala and Rajpura rather than limiting it to the Tricity. As of the most recent reporting, officials from Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana met RITES in mid-2025 and again sought a revised Scenario Analysis Report after discrepancies were found in ridership projections, economic assumptions and modelling.

Bottom line for investors: as of July 2026, the Chandigarh Tricity Metro (including any New Chandigarh or Aerotropolis-area station) is a cleared-on-paper, DPR-stage proposal with no construction start date confirmed — commonly cited target windows range from 2027 (construction start) to 2032–2037 (Phase 1 completion), but these remain aspirational given the funding and viability disputes still underway.

Ports

Punjab is landlocked and no port, inland waterway terminal, or dry port is associated with Eco City-4, Sector 87 or the Aerotropolis expansion. This category is not applicable to this region.

Internal road network within the plan

GMADA's master planning treats road infrastructure as a large, separately-acquired category rather than an incidental part of each township. The state has committed to acquiring 1,240 acres just for master plan roads across Mohali and New Chandigarh, with roads, sewerage, stormwater drains and water supply all factored into the acquisition plan.

Existing Eco City phases give a sense of internal road standards: Eco City Phase-I, planned to the south of MDR-B, was developed on 400 acres acquired under 100% land pooling, and is located on a 200-foot wide arterial highway (an extension of Madhya Marg), hardly 6 km from Chandigarh's Madhya Marg. Comparable private-sector documentation of built Eco City sectors describes wide roads (100 ft, 80 ft, 60 ft) with underground electricity, sewerage and planned drainage.

For the Aerotropolis pocket, GMADA has already put internal road contracts out to tender: GMADA awarded a ₹509 crore tender to Ludhiana-based CEL-JSPPV for developing the Aerotropolis township — an extension of Aerocity — with a two-year deadline, covering internal roads, sewerage, storm water lines and underground electrical infrastructure. Grid-road construction there is described by market trackers as physical evidence of development, alongside the pending resolution of a 927-acre Pocket A land dispute.

For Eco City-4 specifically, internal road design has not yet been published — the project is still at the land-notification stage (Section 4(1) notified June 2, 2026), and detailed layout plans including sector roads typically follow only after possession and a sanctioned layout, as seen in the multi-year gap between notification and road tendering in Eco City-1/2/3 and the Aerotropolis.