To boost road infrastructure across the country, the Centre has finalised detailed project reports of 12 expressways. These include two key projects — Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways — which, according to Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, will be completed in the next seven months.
The National Highway Authority (NHAI) is working full time to ensure the National Advance Traffic Management System becomes functional before the end of this year. The Delhi-Gurgaon NH will become the first one to have complete intelligent transport system mode.
“We are doing massive work in the infrastructure sector. There will be investment of worth Rs25 lakh crore in highways and shipping in 5 years. The BJP Government so far has constructed 14,594 km of highways while it has given projects for construction of 21,247 km. The Government is in the process of finalising project reports of 12 expressways and work on the same will be started soon,” Gadkari said while addressing the Economic Editors Conference 2016.
Connecting every major cities and minor towns, these expressways will be a hybrid of National Highways, freeways, over bridges. They would be equipped with latest technologies like CCTV and temperature and speed measure equipments with helpline booths and medical facilities.
Some of the new expressways are Pathankot-Ajmer Expressway, Ahmedabad-Vadodara, Ambala-Chandigarh, Belghoria Chennai Bypass, Coimbatore Bypass, Raipur-Bilaspur Expressways, Delhi-Gurgaon, Delhi-Faridabad and Delhi Meerut among others.
The Minister said almost 22 km of highways was being constructed per day whereas the Ministry is striving to achieve 42 km a day target. “Highway construction target for 2016-17 is 15,000 km and “till October, we constructed 3,591 km”, he said.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked us to complete peripherals to decongest Delhi within 400 days and accordingly, the work is going on and we are hopeful to complete these in the next seven months,” Gadkari added.
The Government remains “committed” to increase the length of National Highways to 2 lakh km. The length of National Highways has already been increased to 1.65 lakh km, from the earlier 96,000 km.
Also, the Minister talked on waterways potential in the country, including cruise tourism, and said the Government has already approved conversion of 111 rivers across the country into waterways. Gadkari said the estimated investment of Rs25 lakh crore in the sector is bound to boost GDP by 3 per cent and this will also create at least 5 crore jobs.
At a roundtable on Intelligent Transport System, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said the Government is working full time to stimulate the deployment of safe, smart and sustainable solutions for road networks using technology in the country, including setting up of National Intelligent Transport systems (ITS) standards and Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) — a nodal centre will be set up along with State ATMS and will share major data on road usage.