Aiming to transform the face of India’s infrastructure in the coming years, the Government on Wednesday said it will add 50,000 km of National Highways by the end of this year to take the total length to 1.5 lakh km across the country.
“We are committed to overhauling the country’s infrastructure in the next five years. In three months from now, we will take the length of National Highways from 1 lakh to 1.5 lakh km,” said Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways. Gadkari was addressing the annual convention at the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.
“We should also be able to award road projects worth RS3.5 lakh crore in 2015-16 to boost infrastructure. In the next two years we want to widen 10,000 km of highways from the existing two lanes to four lanes,” he said.
Gadkari who had promised to boost the road construction average to 30 kms a day in the next two years, said the pace has already been pushed up from 2 kms a day last year to 14 kms this year.
“The situation in the highways sector has started looking better. Recently, nine projects were awarded on a PPP model as against only three last year. We are winning back the investor confidence which was looking bad until last year,” he said.
“Of the stuck projects worth RS3.8 lakh crore, a majority has been rolled out and problems related to projects worth about RS60,000 crore are being addressed,” he said.
Gadakri said the work on the Government’s ambitious RS4,000-crore ‘Metrino’ public transport project, which will enable people to travel in driverless pods suspended to a ropeway in the National Capital Region, will start in a month.
“We have got the detailed project report for the Metrino project that will connect the 70-km stretch from Dhaula Kuan to Manesar in Haryana. The scientific study has been done. The work on it is likely to start in a month,” Gadkari added.
The cost of Metrino comes to barely RS50 crore a km compared with RS350 crore a km for the Metro, he said, hoping that the project will ease traffic situation in Delhi.
Additionally, as an eco-friendly measure, ISRO in collaboration with the Ministry is developing cost-effective lithium-ion batteries that will power electric buses in Delhi.
The Government plans to run at least 15 electric buses driven by economically-viable battery technology in six months.