Transport in India consists of transport by land, water and air. Road transport is the primary mode of transport for most Indian citizens, and India's road transport systems are among the most heavily used in the world.
The Golden Quadrilateral is a national highway network connecting several major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. It forms a quadrilateral with all the four major metro cities of India forming the vertices, viz., Delhi (north), Kolkata (east), Mumbai (west) and Chennai (south). Other major cities connected by this network include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Balasore, Bhadrak, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Durgapur, Faridabad, Guntur, Gurugram, Jaipur, Kanpur, Pune, Kolhapur, Surat, Vijayawada, Eluru, Ajmer, Visakhapatnam, Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Agra, Mathura, Dhanbad, Gandhinagar, Udaipur, and Vadodara. The main objective of these super highways is to reduce the travel time between the major cities of India, running roughly along the perimeter of the country. The North–South corridor linking Srinagar and Kanyakumari, and East–West corridor linking Silchar (Assam) and Porbandar (Gujarat) are additional projects. These highway projects are implemented by the National Highway Authority Of India (NHAI). At 5,846 kilometres (3,633 mi), it is the largest highway project in India and the fifth longest in the world. It is the first phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of two, four, and six-lane express highways, built at a cost of ₹600 billion (US$7.2 billion). The project was planned in 1999, launched in 2001, and was completed in 7 January 2012.
Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd, abbreviated as GRSE, is one of India's leading shipyards, located in Kolkata. It builds and repairs commercial and naval vessels. GRSE also exports the ships that the company builds.
In civilian and maritime law in India, a Port Trust Board is the statutory authority responsible for managing shipping and trade through a commercial seaport. India's first Port Trust Board was established for Calcutta Port in 1870, following passage of the Bombay Port Trust Act in 1879. Similar Boards were set up in Madras in 1905. The administration of Port Trust Boards were brought under national government in 1963 with legislation to enable the declaration of "major ports" with ownership of adjacent public land on the foreshore and seabed All ports previously established under different Acts were brought within the purview of this newly enacted law.
Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) is the statutory authority in charge of the waterways in India. It was constituted under IWAI Act-1985 by the Parliament of India. Its headquarters is located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is a ministry of the Government of India, that is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules, regulations and laws relating to road transport, transport research and in also to increase the mobility and efficiency of the road transport system in India. Through its officers of Central Engineering Services (Roads) cadre it is responsible for the development of National Highways of the country.
The Indian Maritime University, abbreviated as IMU, is a public central university directly under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, in India. It deals with a wide range of topics related to the sea, ranging from oceanography to maritime law and history, and including practical topics such as search and rescue at sea and the transportation of dangerous goods. It is India's prestigious national institute for the training of Merchant navy Officers. Admissions to IMU are done through IMUCET entrance examination, which is conducted every year across the country. It was established by the Indian Maritime University Act 2008, on 14 November 2008.Before the foundation of IMU, there were seven renowned teaching and research institutes under the Ministry of Shipping. The following legacy institutes were subsumed under IMU in 2008.
National Waterway 4 (NW-4) is a 1,095 kilometres (680 mi) long waterway in India. It has been declared as an Indian National Waterway and is currently under development. It connects the Indian states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and the union territory of Puducherry. The NW-4 runs along the Coromandal Coast through Kakinada, Eluru, Commanur, Buckingham Canals and also through part of Krishna and Godavari rivers in South India. It was declared a National Waterway on 24 November 2008 under the Provisions of National Waterways Bill, 2006. It is being developed by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), and was scheduled for completion by 2013. The National Waterways Act, 2016 has extended the length of NW-4 from 1,095 km (680 mi) to 2,890 km (1,800 mi) by connecting the Krishna and Godavari Rivers. The Project would be undertaken in 3 phases with first phase beginning in October, 2017 and to be completed by June, 2019
Tamil Nadu, a state in South India, has a developed, dense, and modern transportation infrastructure, encompassing both public and private transport. Its capital city Chennai is well-connected by land, sea, and air and serves as a major hub for entry into South India.
Andhra Pradesh is well connected with various destinations in India, as well as other countries. It has road, rail, airways. With a long coast of Bay of Bengal and many sea ports, it flourishes in sea trade as well. The state has one of the largest railway junctions at Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam Port being one of the largest cargo handling seaport.
The Sagarmala Programme is an initiative by the Government of India to enhance the performance of the country's logistics sector. The programme envisages unlocking the potential of waterways and the coastline to minimize infrastructural investments required to meet these targets.
The National Shipping Board is an Advisory Body on matters related to shipping and shipping infrastructure (ports). As India gained its independence in 1947 shipping had become very important for the growth of India as the Shipping Laws were created by old British law it had to be revised and in 1958 when the Merchant Shipping Law was consolidated and the opportunity was taken to provide for the formation of a Permanent statutory body called the National Shipping Board. The National Shipping Board was established on 1 March 1959.The Body was established by a recommendation to the Reconstruction Policy Sub-Committee as early as 1947. It comes under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (India), it looks into matters related to Indian Shipping.The National Shipping Board members are elected/nominated by Parliament, Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament and Rajya Sabha. The National Maritime Agenda 2010-2020 is an initiative of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways & The National Shipping Board to outline the framework for the development of the port sector. The agenda also suggests policy-related initiatives to improve the operating efficiency and competitiveness of the Ports in India.
The Bharatmala Pariyojna was a project in India implemented by Government of India. It was slated to interconnect 550 District Headquarters through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 and move 80% freight traffic to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total 8,000 km (5,000 mi), 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7,500 km (4,700 mi) and 7 north east Multi-Modal waterway ports. The project also includez development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam free & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded Road and Highways project of the Government of India. This ambitious umbrella programme subsumed all existing Highway Projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. The total investment for 83,677 km (51,994 mi) committed new highways is estimated at ₹10.63 trillion (US$130 billion), making it the single largest outlay for a government road construction scheme. The project will build highways from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan territories - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Special emphasis will be given on providing connectivity to far-flung border and rural areas including the tribal and backward areas.
The East Coast Economic Corridor (ECEC) is India’s first coastal economic corridor, covering 2500 km of India's coastline, to be developed with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The ADB is to invest $500 million in infrastructural development of the project. Since late 2013, ADB has been supporting studies on transport corridors in India. Phase 1 of the ECEC is Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) which had been approved by the ADB board in October 2016. The ECEC running along the entire east coast of India from Kolkata to Kanyakumari, is a multimodal, regional maritime corridor that can play a vital role in unifying the large domestic market, as well as integrating the Indian economy with the dynamic global value chains of Southeast and East Asia. It would play a crucial role in the Government of India’s (GoI) Make in India campaign and also supports the port-led industrialization strategy under the Sagar Mala initiative and the Act East Policy by linking domestic companies with the vibrant global production networks of East and Southeast Asia.
Hooghly Cochin Shipyard Limited is a shipyard at Howrah, India. The company has two units located at Salkia and Nazirganj on the bank of River Hooghly in the city of Howrah. It manufactures various types of vessels, dredgers, floating drydock, oil pollution control vessels, passenger vessels, etc.
The Haldia Port, officially Haldia Dock Complex (HDC), is a port on the confluence of the Haldi River and the Hooghly River. The port is located at Haldia in West Bengal, about 130 kilometres (81 mi) from the sandheads–deep sea area of the Bay of Bengal, 45 kilometres (28 mi) upstream from Pilotage Station at Sagar and 104 km downstream of Kolkata. In 1968, an oil jetty was commissioned at Haldia, and officially in 1977 the port facility of Haldia started functioning as a subsidiary port of the Port of Kolkata under the name Haldia Dock Complex.
Water transport in India has played a significant role in the country's economy and is indispensable to foreign trade. India is endowed with an extensive network of waterways in the form of rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks and a long coastline accessible through the seas and oceans. It has the largest carrying capacity of any form of transport and is most suitable for carrying bulky goods over long distances.
Total length of road in West Bengal is 92,023 kilometers. Among these national highway are 2,377 kilometers, and state highway 2,393 kilometers. The road density of the state is 103.69 kilometers per 100 square kilometers ; the national density is 74.7 kilometers per 100 square kilometers. The average speed of the road in the state is between 40 and 50 kilometers/hour. The speed in the village and urban areas is between 20 and 25 kilometers/hour. This is the main reason the road is low and lack of maintenance. The total length of the railway line in the state is 3,825 kilometers. Indian Railways' Eastern Railway zone and South Eastern Railway zone Headquarter are located in Kolkata. The railways on the north side of the state Under the Northeast Frontier Railway. Kolkata Metro is India's first underground metro rail service. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, part of the Northeast Frontier Railway, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Multi-Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs) is a key policy initiative of the Government of India, led by National Highways Logistics Management Limited under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), to develop Multi-Modal Logistics Parks in hub-and-spoke model to improve the country's freight logistics sector by lowering overall freight costs and time, cutting warehousing costs, reducing vehicular pollution and congestion, improving the tracking and traceability of consignments through infrastructural, procedural, and information technology interventions.
Kolkata Inland Port is an inland port. The port is located on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River in the Garden Reach area of Kolkata. It was developed by Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) in 2013. It has a total area of 10 acres and a river front of 400 metres (1,300 ft) in length. The port consists of three jetties, which are one permanent RCC jetty and two pontoon jetties. The port mainly handles barges; the depth of water at the permanent jetty is 5 metres (16 ft).
