History
The National Highways Act, 1956 [6] provided for public i.e. state investment in the building and maintenance of the highways.
The National Highways Authority of India was established by the National Highways Authority of India Act, 1988. Section 16(1) of the Act states that the function of NHAI is to develop, maintain, and manage the National Highways and any other highways vested in, or entrusted to, it by the Government of India.
In 1998 India launched a massive program of highway upgrades, called the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), in which the main north–south and east–west corridors and highways connecting the four metropolitan cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata) have been fully paved and widened into four-lane highways. Some of the busier National Highway sectors in India were also converted to four- or six-lane limited-access highways.
National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited started functioning w.e.f. 18 July 2014. [7] It is a fully owned company of Government of India under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and was created to develop, maintain and manage the national highways, strategic roads and other infrastructure of India. It was dedicated to the task of promoting regional connectivity in parts of the country which share international boundaries. It is responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways in hilly terrain of North-East part of India, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Uttarakhand. It works as a specialised agency in high altitude areas and border areas. Apart from highways, NHIDCL is constructing logictic hubs and transport related infrastructure e.g. multimodal transport hubs such as bus ports, container depots, automated multilevel car parking etc.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways adopted a new systematic numbering of National Highways in April 2010. [8] It is a systematic numbering scheme based on the orientation and the geographic location of the highway. The new system indicates the direction of National Highways whether they are east–west (odd numbers) or north–south (even numbers). It also indicates the geographical region where they are with even numbers increasing from east to west starting from NH2 and odd numbers increasing from north to south starting from NH1. [9]
Bharatmala, a centrally-sponsored and funded road and highways project of the Government of India [10] with a target of constructing 83,677 km (51,994 mi) [11] of new highways, has been started in 2018. Phase I of the Bharatmala project involves the construction of 34,800 km of highways (including the remaining projects under NHDP) at an estimated cost of ₹5.35 lakh crore (US$67 billion) by 2021–22. [12]
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$7.5 billion). The project was planned in 1999, launched in 2001, and was completed in 7 January 2012.
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 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.
Nitin Jairam Gadkari is an Indian politician from Maharashtra who is the current Minister for Road Transport & Highways in the Government of India. He is also the longest serving Minister for Road Transport & Highways currently running his tenure for over nine years. Gadkari earlier served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2009 to 2013. He is also known for his work as the Public Works Department Minister of the State of Maharashtra, where, under his leadership, a series of roads, highways and flyovers across the state were constructed.
National Highway 44 is a major north–south National Highway in India and is the longest in the country.
Expressways are the highest class of roads in India. In July 2023, the total length of expressways in India was 5,342 km (3,319 mi), with 8,603 km (5,346 mi) under construction. These are controlled-access highways where entrance and exits are controlled by the use of cloverleaf or 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 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.
The Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) or Kundli–Ghaziabad–Palwal Expressway is a 135 km (84 mi) long, 6-lane wide expressway passing through the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in India. The expressway starts from the Western Peripheral Expressway at Kundli, Sonipat, passing through Baghpat, Ghaziabad and Noida districts in UP and Faridabad district in Haryana before rejoining the Western Peripheral Expressway near Dholagarh, Palwal. Eastern Peripheral Expressway along with Western Peripheral Expressway completes the largest Ring Road around Delhi. The Eastern Peripheral Expressway was declared as National Expressway 2 (NE-2) in March 2006.
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. Road transport is a critical infrastructure for economic development of the country. It influences the pace, structure and pattern of development. In India, roads are used to transport over 60 percent of the total goods and 85 percent of the passenger traffic. Hence, development of this sector is of paramount importance for India and accounts for a significant part in the budget.
IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited, is an Indian highway construction company headed by Mr. Virendra Dattatraya Mhaiskar. It was incorporated in 1998, with its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is part of the IRB Group and was ranked 200th in the Fortune India 500 list in 2020. IRB Infrastructure, which executed the country's first build-operate-transfer (BOT) road project, is one of the largest operators of such ventures. Currently it has about 3,404 lane Km operational and about 2,330 lane Km under development. Among its notable projects are the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway. In 2012, IRB acquired Tamil Nadu based BOT road builder MVR Infrastructure and Tollways for ₹130 crore. The company got the contract of Ganga Expressway, the longest under-construction expressway in Uttar Pradesh.
The Bengaluru–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 Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka and Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. It will run from Hoskote in Bengaluru Metropolitan Region Development Authority to Sriperumbudur in Chennai Metropolitan Area. It is planned to allow vehicles to reach 120 km/h (75 mph). The road was designated as a National Expressway on 1 January 2021. The total project value is ₹ 17,930 crore. The Expressway is expected to be completed before the end of 2025, despite earlier dates announced by the national Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari.
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 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.
The Outer Ring Road is a 119 km under construction ring road around the city of Nagpur, in Maharashtra. A part of the road is between NH 44 and NH 56 towards east of the city of 62 km length is already operational. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has issued work orders for execution of remaining stretch of 61 km. The value of work orders is Rs 1,170 crore making it the biggest ongoing road project in and around the city. After Pardi flyover, it would be second to be executed since city MP Nitin Gadkari became union minister for road transport and highways under which NHAI is functioning.
Delhi–Jaipur Highway or NH48 is a 242-kilometre-long (150 mi), eight-lane, Highway, connecting Delhi with Jaipur in India. It starts from Kherki Toll Plaza in Gurugram and terminate near Daulatpura Toll Plaza at Jaipur.
The Delhi–Mumbai Expressway is a 1,350 km long, 8-lane wide under-construction access-controlled expressway connecting India's national capital New Delhi to its financial capital Mumbai. The foundation stone for the project was laid by union minister Nitin Gadkari in the presence of Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley on 8 March 2019. The total project value including the land acquisition cost is around ₹1,00,000 crores. An additional 31 km long spur will also be constructed by the NHAI from Noida International Airport in Jewar to Sector-65, Faridabad on this expressway.
The DND–Faridabad–KMP Expressway, formally known as NH-148NA is a 59 km long, 6-lane wide access-controlled expressway in Delhi NCR, India. It connects the junction of DND Flyway and Ring Road at Maharani Bagh in Delhi with KMP Expressway at Khalilpur, Nuh district in Haryana. The NH-148NA is a spur (branch) of Delhi–Mumbai Expressway project. This expressway will have an additional 31 km long spur from Sector-65, Faridabad bypass to Jewar Airport.
