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.
The national highways in India are a network of limited access roads owned by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. National highways have flyover access or some controlled-access, where entrance and exit is through the side of the flyover. At each highway intersection, flyovers are provided to bypass the traffic on the city, town, or village. These highways are designed for speeds of 100 km/h. Some national highways have interchanges in between, but do not have total controlled-access throughout the highways. The highways are constructed and managed by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), and the public works departments (PWD) of state governments. Currently, the longest national highway in India is National Highway 44 at 4,112 km. India started four laning of major national highways with the National Highway Development Project (NHDP). As of March 2022 India has approximately 35,000 km of four laned National highways.
The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, set up in 1995 and is responsible for management of a road network of over 50,000 km of National highways out of 1,32,499 km in India. It is a nodal agency of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). NHAI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for satellite mapping of highways.
Roads in India are an important mode of transport in India. India has a network of over 6,331,791 kilometres (3,934,393 mi) of roads. This is the second-largest road network in the world, after the United States. At of roads per square kilometre of land, the quantitative density of India's road network is equal to that of Hong Kong, and substantially higher than the United States, China, Brazil and Russia. Adjusted for its large population, India has approximately 5.13 kilometres (3.19 mi) of roads per 1,000 people, which is much lower than United States 20.5 kilometres (12.7 mi) but higher than that of China 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi). India's road network carries over 71% of its freight and about 85% of passenger traffic.
The North–South–East–West r (NS-EW) is the largest ongoing highway project in India. It is the second phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of building 7300 kilometers of four/six lane highways associating Srinagar, Kanyakumari, Kochi, Porbandar and Silchar, at a cost of US$12.317 billion ₹1000000000000(One lakh Crore INR). As of 19 March 2024, 6875 of the 7142 kilometers project has been finished.
The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) was a project of four laning of existing national highways and six laning of selected major national highways of India. The project was started in 1998 under the leadership of Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. National Highways account for only about 2% of the total length of roads, but carry about 40% of the total traffic across the length and breadth of the country. This project is managed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways. The NHDP represents 49,260 km of roads and highways work and construction in order to boost economic development of the country. The government has planned to end the NHDP program in early 2018 and subsume the ongoing projects under a larger Bharatmala project.
Kerala, a state in Southern India, has a network of 11 National Highways, 72 State Highways and many district roads.
Expressways are the highest class of roads in India. In July 2023, the total length of expressways in India was 5,930 km (3,680 mi), with 11,127.69 km (6,914.43 mi) under construction. These are controlled-access highways where entrance and exits are controlled by the use of cloverleaf, three-way, trumpet or grade separated interchanges that are incorporated into the design of the expressway and designed for maximum speed of 120 km/h, whereas National highways are flyover access or tolled, where entrance and exit is through the side of the flyover, at each intersection of highway with road, flyovers are provided to bypass the city/town/village traffic and these highways are designed for speed of 100 km/h. Some roads are not access-controlled expressways but are still named expressways, such as the Bagodara–Tarapur Expressway, Biju Expressway, these are actually state highways that are not declared by the central government as an Expressway, hence not an Expressway or National Highway.
Anurag Jain
In Tamil Nadu, the Highways & Minor Ports Department (HMPD) is primarily responsible for construction and maintenance of roads including national highways, state highways and major district roads. HMPD was established as Highways Department (HD) in April 1946 and subsequently renamed on 30 October 2008. It operates through seven wings namely National Highways Wing, Construction & Maintenance Wing, NABARD and Rural Roads Wing, Projects Wing, Metro Wing, Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project Wing, Investigation and Designs Wing geographically spread across the state in 38 districts with about 120 divisions and 450 subdivisions.
The Kaladan Road Project is a US$484 million project connecting the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with Sittwe seaport in Rakhine State, Myanmar by sea. In Myanmar, it will then link Sittwe seaport to Paletwa in Chin State via the Kaladan river boat route, and then from Paletwa by road to Mizoram state in Northeast India. All components of the project, including Sittwe port and power, river dredging, Paletwa jetty, have been completed, except the under construction Zorinpui-Paletwa road. Originally, the project was scheduled to be completed by 2014, but end-to-end project is expected to be fully operational only by December 2023 as per November 2023 update.
Hisar Airport, officially known as Maharaja Agrasen International Airport is a DGCA-licensed public airport serving Hisar in Haryana state of India. It is located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) northeast of the city center on NH-9. The airport is planned to be upgraded to an international airport by 2030. It will eventually see the development of a new MRO, aerospace university, aerospace and defense manufacturing industrial zone, logistics and food parks, etc. over an area spread across 10,000 acres (4,000 ha). In 2021, the total cost of planned upgrade in 3 phases, including the actual spend and future approved allocations, is nearly ₹5,200 crore.
National Highway 66, commonly referred to as NH 66, is a mostly 4 lane 1640 km long busy National Highway that runs roughly north–south along the western coast of India, parallel to the Western Ghats. It connects Panvel, a city east of Mumbai to Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari), passing through the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
The Bharatmala Pariyojna is an ongoing project that will 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 includes 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 will subsume all existing Highway Projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. Bharatmala is mainly focused on connecting remote areas and satellite cities of megacities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad etc. The total investment for 83,677 km (51,994 mi) committed new highways is estimated at ₹10.63 lakh crore (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.
National Highway 83 is a primary national highway in India. NH-83 runs in an east-west direction, entirely within the state of Tamil Nadu in India. 4-laning of Pollachi to Dindigul stretch was approved in 2018.
National Highway 361, commonly called NH 361, is a national highway in India that runs entirely within the state of Maharashtra. Its western terminal is in Tuljapur near the intersection of NH 52 and the eastern terminal is in Butibori near Nagpur at the intersection of NH 44. The total length of the highway NH-361 is 548 km. It is a spur road of National Highway 61.
National Highway 348A, commonly called NH 348A is a small national highway in India. It is a spur road of National Highway 348. NH-348A traverses the state of Maharashtra in India.
National Highway 544D, commonly called NH 544D, and sometimes Anantapur-Guntur National highway 544D, is a national highway in India. It is a spur road of National Highway 44. NH-544D traverses the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.
National Highway 166E, commonly referred to as NH 166E is a national highway in India. It is a spur road of National Highway 66. NH-166E traverses the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka in India.
National Highway 365BB is a national highway in India. It is a secondary route of National Highway 65. NH-365BB traverses the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in India. It starts at Suryapet and ends at Kovvur(Rajamahendravaram).Major cities on this route are Suryapet, Khammam and Rajamahendravaram.
