Highways and lows

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is spearheading a number of prestigious highway projects like the 5,800 km Golden Quadrilateral and the 7,300 km East-West and North-South corridors, as well as projects for improvement of national highways. The main projects are intended “to create 14,000 km of world class roads with uninterrupted four/six lane highways” at a cost of over Rs. 58,000 crore. NHAI intends to create about 1,500 km per year and complete the projects by 2007.

On my frequent trips over NH 24 from Delhi towards Moradabad and Rampur, I have noticed problems that will not make this objective easy. Though the double laning from Delhi towards Garmukteshwar is progressing fast, the road has been built at a faster speed than the culverts, resulting in frequent diversions from left to right lanes, with very little sign-posting to warn motorists. NHAI could have planned these to ensure better co-ordination.

The Hapur and Moradabad bypasses have been almost ready for several months. But they have reportedly been delayed because the Railways need to give the final clearances for the overbridges. Thus the authority of NHAI seems to have some severe limitations. Between Moradabad and Rampur, there is also a narrow two-lane bridge over the Kosi River that has been under repairs for the past two months.

It seems that this bridge comes under the local PWD who are taking their own sweet time with a small team leisurely welding some damaged joints. So another roadblock on NHAI’s authority results in thousands of trucks and cars having to wait for several sweaty hours until they can proceed on a one-way basis. Recently, two villages between Hapur and Simbhauli erected six dangerously high speedbreakers. When a highway goes through a village, elderly people, children, and livestock sometimes get killed or injured, so villagers will meet any attempts by the police or the highway authorities to enforce the laws banning locally made speedbreakers on national highways with big ‘lathis’ and violence. The practice has become widespread in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Haryana. So NHAI’s efforts to create “world class uninterrupted highways” have been impeded in many states. Most of the new highways also have high concrete raised dividers and deep concrete drains along the sides. These are recipes for certain disaster if fast cars, trucks and buses go off course.

NHAI has evolved out of CPWD and is mainly staffed by ex-CPWD personnel so it carries the baggage of a lot of old PWD thinking. Though their experts have gone on study tours all over the world they have ignored many good examples from countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan. They have all built their highways on land aligned to be away from the existing towns and villages unlike our so-called highways that are actually only wider inter-city roads. With the exception of the Mumbai-Pune expressway that has mostly been aligned away from the towns, most of India’s highways mainly carry slow short-distance traffic including bullock carts and tractor trolleys that impede fast long distance transport intended to accelerate India’s economic progress. A recent study by Dr Geetam Tiwari of IIT Delhi concluded that one tractor trailer occupies as much time and space on a highway as 30 cars.

People, bicycles and bullock carts also need roads, but they should not be allowed on limited access toll paying highways and must have good parallel roads where they can ply. In China, towns and villages near which a highway runs are consulted and small ground level tunnels are built under the raised highways going through these towns. Consideration of local needs makes traffic management easier leaving the highway patrols to concentrate on checking vehicle condition, overloading, lane discipline and speeding. The cuts in the dividers also need to be more frequent so people do not have to drive on the wrong side.

Malaysia’s 900 km North-South highway is a limited-access tollway built away from the populated areas, but has a mandatory system of parallel roads for traffic that does not pay toll charges. Instead of widening the existing highways, NHAI could have retained these for inter town transport and built new highways away from the population centres.

The main funding for the projects will come from a Re 1 petroleum cess that generates about Rs 6,000 crore annually. Another Rs 20,000 crore will come from Asian Development Bank loans and the rest from market borrowings and private sector investments. The World Bank report estimates that India stands to save about Rs. 8,000 crore per year through lesser fuel consumption and lower maintenance costs on the GQ alone.

Toll charges on the expressways are intended to recover most of the construction costs over twenty years. Many private sector and foreign companies have won contracts to build tendered segments of the highways on a Build, Own and Transfer (BOT) basis, despite the fact that most highway projects are not money-spinners worldwide. Political and business pressures often diminish the long-term financial projections. The existing highways take a toll of about 90,000 lives a year and slow down economic activity. India’s new highways can hugely benefit the country but NHAI needs to urgently review its policies so that some dangerous and expensive mistakes are avoided.