Highway upgrades identified
About 26,200 km stretches of Economic Corridors, 8,000 km of Inter Corridors, 7,500 km of Feeder Routes and 5,300 km Border and International connectivity roads have been identified for development, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on 2 Mar 2020.
Also identified for development along the same programme is 4,100 km Coastal and Port connectivity roads, 1,900 km Expressways, National Corridor Efficiency improvement by development of ring roads around 28 cities, decongestion of about 125 choke points and 66 congestion points and development of 35 Multimodal Logistics Parks.
The Ministry had reviewed National Highways (NHs) network to develop the road connectivity to Border areas, development of Coastal roads including road connectivity for Non-Major ports, improvement in the efficiency of National Corridors, development of Economic Corridors, Inter Corridors and Feeder Routes along with integration with Sagarmala, a port-coastal development etc under “Bharatmala Pariyojana”.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the proposal for Phase-I of “Bharatmala Pariyojana” during its meeting held on 24.10.2017, recapped Gadkari.
The “Bharatmala Pariyojana” Phase–I includes development of about 9,000 km length of Economic corridors, about 6,000 km length of Inter-corridor and feeder roads, about 5,000 km length of National Corridors Efficiency improvements inter-alia entailing development of ring roads/bypasses, etc.
The Phase-I also include decongestion of choke points/congestions points, about 2,000 km length of Border and International connectivity roads, about 2,000 km length of Coastal and port connectivity roads, about 800 km length of Expressways and balance length of about 10,000 km of roads under National Highway Development Project (NHDP).
Various phases of NHDP envisaged development of NHs to 4/6 lane and 2 lane NH standards, development of expressways, etc.
Development of most of the roads/ NHs under other schemes envisages their upgradation to 2 lane NH standards.
The development of NHs and roads are under various phases of NHDP, Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for the North East Region (SARDP-NE) including Arunachal Pradesh Package of Roads, Special Programme for Development of Roads in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected areas, Externally Aided Projects (EAP), National Highways (Original) [NH (O)] scheme, etc. fiinews.com
