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 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/h. 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. India started four laning of major national highways with National Highway Development Project (NHDP). As of March 2022 India have approximately 35,000 km of four laned National highways.
Open road tolling (ORT), also called all-electronic tolling, cashless tolling, or free-flow tolling, is the collection of tolls on toll roads without the use of toll booths. An electronic toll collection system is usually used instead. The major advantage to ORT is that users are able to drive through the toll plaza at highway speeds without having to slow down to pay the toll. In some installations, ORT may also reduce congestion at the plazas by allowing more vehicles per hour/per lane.
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.
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.
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. As of July 2023, India has a total length of 5,173 km (3,214 mi) of expressways. 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 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 NH 48 thereon till it reaches Maduravoyal.
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 National Payments Corporation of India is an organization that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India. The organization is an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India.
NH 248-BB, commonly known as Dwarka Expressway is a 27.6 km (17.1 mi) long, under construction, 8-lane (elevated) and 8-lane, total 16-lane elevated grade separated expressway connecting Dwarka in Delhi to Kherki Daula Toll Plaza, Gurgaon in Haryana. The expressway takes off from km 20 milestone of NH 48 at Shiv Murti in Mahipalpur in Delhi and terminate at km 40 of NH 48 near Kherki Daula Toll Plaza in Gurgaon in Haryana. The Dwarka Expressway has been planned as an alternate road link between Delhi and Gurgaon, and is expected to ease the traffic situation on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.
The Coimbatore Bypass Road refers to a series of bypasses connecting the various National Highways and State Highways passing through and originating in the South Indian city of Coimbatore.
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.
Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL) is an Indian payments bank, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Noida. In the same year, it received the license to run a payments bank from the Reserve Bank of India and was launched in November 2017. In 2021, the bank received a scheduled bank status from the RBI.
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.
Vijayawada–Hyderabad Expressway is a 247 km long, 4/6 lane wide tolled expressway that connects Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh with Hyderabad in Telangana. It was opened for public in October 2012. The project was undertaken by concessionaire GMR Hyderabad Vijayawada Expressways Private Limited, a subsidiary of GMR Group on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis. It is one of the busiest expressways in India and is a part of National Highway 65, which connects Machilipatnam to Pune.
