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, Guntur, Jaipur, Kanpur, Pune, Kolhapur, Surat, Vijayawada, Eluru, Ajmer, Vizag, 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$7.5 billion). The project was planned in 1999, launched in 2001, and was completed in July 2013.
The National highways in India are a network of trunk 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 intersection of highways flyovers are provided to bypass the city/town/village traffic and these highways are designed for speed of 100 km/hr. Some national highways have interchanges in between, but do not have total controlled-access throughout the highways. It is 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.
National Highway 8 is a 4-lane National Highway in India. According to estimates, it is the busiest highway in the subcontinent, as it connects the national capital Delhi to the financial capital Mumbai, as well as important cities Gurgaon, Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Nadiad, Anand and Kheda. The total length is 1428km. Under the new numbering it has become part of the NH48.
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 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. NHAI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Space Research Organisation for satellite mapping of highways.
Roads are an important mode of transport in India. India has a network of over 6,215,797 kilometres (3,862,317 mi) of roads as of 1 December 2021. This is the second-largest road network in the world, after the United States with 6,853,024 kilometres (4,258,272 mi). 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 percent of its freight and about 85 percent of passenger traffic.
The North–South–East–West Corridor (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. As of 31 March 2018, 6875 of the 7142 kilometers project has been finished.
Kerala, a state in Southern India, has a network of 11 National Highways, 72 State Highways and many district roads.
Delhi, a major metropolitan region of India, is connected to various parts of country through several national highways and expressways. All the highways and expressways from Delhi lead to Haryana or Uttar Pradesh and continue from there.
Old National Highway 2 or Old NH 2, was a major National Highway in India, that connected the states of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. It constitutes a major portion of the historical Grand Trunk Road along with old NH 91 and old NH 1 in India. The highway connects national capital Delhi with Kolkata as well as important cities such as Faridabad, Mathura, Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Dhanbad, Asansol, Durgapur and Bardhaman.
Expressways are the highest class of roads in India. As of March 2023, India has a total length of 4147.27 km of expressways. These are controlled-access highways where entrance and exits are controlled by the use of cloverleaf or trumpet or grade seperated interchanges that are incorporated into the design of the expressway and designed for maximum speed of 120 km/hr, whereas National highways are flyover access or controlled-access highway, 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/hr. Some roads are not access-controlled expressways, but are still named as expressways, such as the Biju Expressway, these are actually state highways which are not declared by central government as an Expressway, hence not an Expressway or National Highway. Mumbai–Pune Expressway is the first 6-lane operational expressway in India started in 2002. Expressways follow standards set by Indian Roads Congress and Bureau of Indian Standards.
The Chennai Port – Maduravoyal Expressway is a 20.6-kilometre (12.8 mi) long, six lane, double-decker elevated expressway under construction in the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The corridor begins at Chennai Port Gate No. 10 and travels along the bank of the Cooum River till it reaches Koyambedu and along the median of NH4 thereon till it reaches Maduravoyal.
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 Bangalore–Chennai Expressway, or National Expressway 7 (NE-7), is an under construction 258 km (160 mi) long, 4-lane wide access-controlled expressway between the cities of Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka and Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. It will run from Hoskote in Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority to Sriperumbudur in Chennai Metropolitan Area. It is planned to allow vehicles to reach 120 km/h (75 mph). This expressway was designated as a National Expressway on 1 January 2021. The total project value is ₹ 17,930 crore. It will be completed by March 2024.
The Diamond Quadrilateral is a project of the Indian Railways to establish a high-speed rail network in India. The Diamond Quadrilateral will connect the four mega cities of India, viz. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, similar to the Golden Quadrilateral highway system.
Delhi–Meerut Expressway or National Expressway 3 is India's widest 96 km long controlled-access expressway, connecting Delhi with Meerut via Dasna in Ghaziabad in India. The 8 lanes old stretch of National Highway 9 (NH-9) up to Dasna is widened to 14 lanes. The fourth phase of the expressway is built on a new alignment from Dasna to Meerut – a six-lane stretch joining Meerut bypass. The 28 km (17 mi) stretch between Nizamuddin Bridge and Dasna is one of the most congested areas in the NCR. The total project cost is estimated to be between ₹8,000–10,000 crores.
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 Bharatmala Pariyojna is an ecosystem of road development which 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. 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. Bharatmala Project 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.
Setu Bharatam was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 4 March 2016 at a budget of ₹102 billion (US$1.3 billion), with an aim to make all national highways free of railway crossings by 2019.
Atal Progress-Way, also known as Chambal Expressway, is an approved 404 km (251 mi) long, four-lane access-controlled greenfield expressway, which will connect the city of Kota in Rajasthan with the city of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, through the famous city of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. It will pass through three states–Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The expressway is a part of Bharatmala Pariyojana. The government's aim is to develop the economically backward regions of Chambal division and Gwalior division of Madhya Pradesh through the expressway. The expressway will reduce both travel time and distance, from 10-11 hours at present, to only 6-7 hours, and from 490 km (300 mi) to 404 km (251 mi). It will be built at a cost of approximately ₹ 23,700 crore, which was earlier slated at ₹ 20,000 crore. The expressway has been named as Atal Progress-Way after the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and also because he was born in Gwalior, nearby which the expressway will pass.
Surat–Chennai Expressway is an under-construction, 1,271 km (790 mi) long, four- to six-lane access-controlled expressway, which will connect the second largest city of Gujarat, Surat, with the capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai, in India. It will pass through six states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. It will be operated and maintained by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), and will reduce both travel time and distance from around 35 hours to around 28 hours, and from approximately 1,570 km (980 mi) to 1,271 km (790 mi). It will be built at a cost of ₹ 45,000 crore (~US$5.5 billion), which was earlier slated at ₹ 50,000 crore. It will be the second longest expressway in India, after the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway.
