Shimla, July 18 (IANS) Traffic snarls on the Himachal Pradesh-Haryana border may ease soon, as the environment ministry has given its nod to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to cut down 12 hectares of forests for an 11-km-long bypass. Work on the Parwanoo-Pinjore bypass can now begin this September, Himachal Pradesh officials told IANS Friday.

The bypass will be completed within two years, the officials said.

The new road link will start from Timber Trail hotel in Himachal Pradesh’s Parwanoo and end near Yadvendra Gardens at Pinjore in Haryana.

It will skip Kalka town in Haryana, the main traffic bottleneck on the road.

At present, the bumpy and uncomfortable drive through a narrow road from Parwanoo to Pinjore via Kalka is a motorist’s nightmare.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has proposed a six-lane expressway between Shimla and Parwanoo.

At a recent meeting, officials of the NHAI had proposed four-laning the entire road but Dhumal insisted that it should be made a six-lane highway.

The volume of traffic on the Shimla-Parwanoo highway is estimated to be around 23,000 vehicles per day.