India - Roads
India's road network is extensive, but most of it is low quality. The major arterial routes have low capacity (commonly just two lanes in most stretches) and also suffer from poor maintenance. Way side amenities like repair shops, first aid centers, telephones, clean toilets, restaurants, rest places are lacking along the Indian roads. There is very little attention on road safety and traffic laws are wilfully violated.
The romance of rail may continue, but it is clearly the 10-ton Tata truck which is the symbol of the nation's future. The road is one of the great fundamental institutions of mankind. History dates back to the dawn of recorded history and behind. Its beginnings are almost instructive with man's first quest in search of food, water, plunder or sheer adventure. It develops with man's advance; it retrogrades with the break-down of a social order. A people without roads would be a people without intercourse with the outside world without the attributes of civilization.
India has undertaken several significant highway projects to connect major cities across the country. India's Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, on 08 April 2023, spoke about how “development of infrastructure is the most important priority,” for the country. The transport minister also said that by his estimate, India’s highways infrastructure will match that of the United States by the end of next year, “both qualitatively and quantitatively”. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given “highest priority” to developing “world-class infrastructure”. The transport minister said the construction of these highways is taking place at the pace of 38 kilometres per day, as of last year adding that “this year also we will try to maintain that.”
These road-building achievements represent an impressive expansion from the 1950 total of 400,000 kilometers of roads of all kinds, but more than 25 percent of villages still have no road link, and about 60 percent have no all-weather road link. These statistics, however, mask important regional variations. Almost all villages in Kerala, Haryana, and Punjab are served by all-weather roads. By contrast, only 15 percent of villages in Orissa and 21 percent in Rajasthan are connected with all-weather roads. The quality of roads, including major highways, is poor by international standards. Nonetheless, roads carry about 60 percent of all passenger traffic.
The central and state governments share responsibilities for road building and maintaining roads and for some transportation companies. The Ministry of State for Surface Transport administers the national highway system, and state highways and other state roads are maintained by state public works departments. Minor roads are maintained by municipalities, districts, and villages. Still other roads, about 22,000 kilometers in total in 1991, are under the jurisdiction of the Border Roads Development Board, a central government organization established in 1960 to facilitate economic development and defense preparedness, especially in the north and northeast.
The foundation of the road dates back to about 2000 years ago during the reign of the Mauryas. Sher Shah conceived the Sadak-e-Azam in the 16th century, as it was then called, for military and administrative reasons and to link the remotest provinces in his empire that spread across the subcontinent. It literally bound the subcontinent for centuries and acted as a major commercial link with other parts of the country. During the British rule a slight realignment was made in the route between Kolkata and Varanasi, otherwise the road remains the same.
The medieval India saw the emergence of the Grand Trunk Road. The GT Road, as it is famously called, starts in Sonargaon near Dhaka in Bangladesh and ends at Peshawar in Pakistan and links some of the major cities in India from Kolkata to Amritsar.
With the development of Railways in India, the road development received a serious setback. The work of road construction and maintenance was given a secondary importance and thus the roads gradually lost the interest of the government. Major roads, except those of military importance, mainly centered on the feeder roads to railways.
It is a matter of some pride that India boasts of the world’s second-largest road network, and the densest among countries of similar size. Over the years, both accessibility and mobility have improved through construction of new roads and development of existing roads. But Indian roads are grossly unsafe. This statement is made even gloomier as it is closer to being likely conjecture rather than established fact. Regular preventive maintenance has yet to form an integral element of thinking on road investment.
The Nagpur plan of 1943 had a target of building or improving 68,000 miles of hard crust roads and 90,000 miles of earth roads. The originally promised 200,000 km of road network were delivered on schedule by 1963. But surfaced roads disintegrated rapidly, thanks to the post-Independence policy of stretching meagre resources by building a large number of poor quality roads. Even highways were built to last just five years, against the 10 to 15 years today.
According to the Nagpur Plan, National Highways would pass through the states, and places having national importance for strategic or administrative purposes. State highways would link state capitals with other large cities in the state, and district roads would take traffic from the main roads into the interior of the district. Road statistics from the Nagpur Plan period aggregate these two types of road into ‘state highways’. Finally, rural roads would connect villages with major roads. Hence, the classification of the road network was largely defined by the settlements that a road linked.
It was apparent that the quality of the recently enlarged network left much to be desired. Consequently, in 1961, a new 20-year plan — the Bombay Plan of 1961-81 – for Indian roads was adopted. This plan made rural accessibility its defining objective and sought to construct rural roads on better technical foundations. It also first outlined a case for the construction of access-controlled expressways.
Independent India inherited about 21,000 km of National Highways. Fifty years later, India celebrated its golden jubilee with 34,298 km of National Highways, having added just over one per cent to the network for each year of independence. Totalling 76,818 km or 1.9 per cent of the total road network as of March 2012, about 40 per cent of road traffic plies on the National Highways; a figure that is comparable with that of other countries.
Out of the total length of national highways, about 30 per cent length is single lane / intermediate lane, about 53 per cent is two lane standard and the remaining 17 per cent is four land or more standard. The construction, improvement, maintenance and general administration of selected current and planned stretches of the National Highway network are carried out under various phases of the National Highway Development Project (NHDP).
The extensive use of the National Highway by the rural population for their social and work-related trips brings out the need for building service roads along the highway to cater to the slow moving traffic comprising pedestrians, cyclists, bullock carts, etc. Equally important is the safe design of road crossings between highways and village roads. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is responsible for the upgrade and upkeep of several National Highways that are not accounted for by the NHDP. Lumped together under the moniker NH(O) [Other National Highways], these NHs are typically lightly trafficked, mostly less than two lanes, and so are lower priorities for capacity-enhancing investment.
A few short stretches of National Highways are designated expressways: limited access motorways of four or more lanes with grade-separated interchanges, and restricted to motorised transport. With their purposefully limited accessibility, expressways are often built as greenfield projects that run parallel to existing roads.
Phase VI of the project, approved in 2006, provides funds for the completion of 1,000 km of expressways along certain very highly trafficked corridors emanating from the nation’s largest cities, such as from Mumbai to Vadodara, and Bengaluru to Chennai. This phase was scheduled for completion by the end of 2015. Though seven years had elapsed, a detailed program of implementation and investment decisions had yet to be finalised by 2013.
In India, National Highways are at-grade roads whereas Express Highways, commonly known as Expressways, are controlled-access highways, mostly 6-lane or above, where entrance and exit is controlled by the use of slip roads (ramps) that are incorporated into the design of the highway. The highways do not have shoulder lanes. The speed on highway is mostly unregulated and is generally slowed by heavy trucks in middle lanes. The highways are also used by pedestrians and cyclists creating dangerous situations.
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