India has a road network of over 4.42 million kilometres (2.059 million miles) of roadway, making it the second largest road network in the world. At 0.66 km of highway per square kilometer of land the density of India’s highway network is slightly higher than that of the United States (0.65) and far higher than that of China's (0.16) or Brazil's (0.20).[1] As of 2002, only 47.3% of the network consisted of paved roads.
India, in its past, had not allocated resources to build or maintain its road network.[1] This has changed in the last 15 years, with major efforts currently underway to modernize the country's road infrastructure.[2] India plans to spend approximately US$70 Billion by 2013 to modernize its highway network.[3][4][5][6]
As of November 2011, India had completed and placed in use over 14,500 kilometers of recently built 4-lane highways connecting many of its major manufacturing centers, commercial and cultural centers.[7]
Some of the major projects that are being implemented include the National Highways Development Project, Yamuna Expressway and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
According to recent estimates by Goldman Sachs, India will need to invest US$1.7 trillion on infrastructure projects over the next decade to boost economic growth.[8] In an effort to accomplish this, the government of India is attempting to promote foreign investment in road projects by offering financial incentives such as toll rights to developers.[8][9][10]
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The first evidence of road development in the Indian subcontinent can be traced back to approximately 4000 BC from the ancient cities of Harrapa and Mohenjodaro of the Indus Valley Civilization. Around the 1st Century AD, the ancient Silk Road came into being, which passed through northern India and China.
Ruling emperors and monarchs of ancient India constructed numerous brick roads in the cities. One of the most famous highways of medieval India is the Grand Trunk Road. The Grand Trunk Road began in Sonargaon near Dhaka in Bangladesh and ended at Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan. In India, it linked several important cities from Kolkata in the east to Amritsar in the west, while passing through the cities of Patna, Varanasi, Kanpur, Agra, Delhi, Panipat, Pipli, Ambala, Rajpura, Ludhiana, and Jalandhar. During the colonial period in the 19th century, the British upgraded the existing highway network and built roads in many treacherous areas such as the Western Ghats.
In general, roads in India are primarily bitumen-based macadamized roads. However, a few of the National Highways have concrete roads too. In some locations, such as in Kanpur, British-built concrete roads are still in use. Concrete roads were less popular prior to 1990s because of low availability of cement then. However, with large supplies of cement in the country and the virtues of concrete roads, they are once again gaining popularity. Concrete roads are weather-proof and require lower maintenance compared to bituminous roads.
| Class | Length (km) |
|---|---|
| National Highways/Expressways | 66,754 |
| State Highways | 128,000 |
| Major district roads | 470,000 |
| Rural & other roads | 2,650,000 |
| Total (approx) | 3,314,754 |
| Class | Percent (%) |
|---|---|
| Paved Roads (% of 2 lane roads) | 34[11] |
| Paved Roads (% of 4 lane roads) | 1[11] |
| Paved Roads (% of total road network) | 47.3[11] |
The National Highways are the backbone of the road infrastructure in India. State Highways and Major District Roads constitute the secondary system of road infrastructure of India.
Access-controlled expressways of India made up approximately 200 km (120 mi) of the Indian National Highway System in 2009, increasing to over 600 kilometers by 2011.[12],[13],[14] These high-speed roads are four-lane or six-lane. India expects about 3,530 kilometers of expressways to come up by 2014 from the projects under construction. The government has drawn up an ambitious target to lay 18,637 kilometer network of brand new expressways by 2022.[15]
Indian Expressways are access controlled, feature a divider in the center and have four or six-lanes along with a shoulder on either side. Usually no two-wheelers, three-wheelers or tractor vehicles are allowed on these roads. Speeds of 120 km/h (75 mph) can be maintained on these roads due to separate merging lanes and the lack of speed breakers so as to ensure smooth travel. Most of the existing expressways in India are toll roads.[14]
These are main highways running through the length and breadth of the country connecting major ports, state capitals, large industrial and tourist centres, etc. National Highways in India are designated as NH followed by the highway number. Indian national highways are further classified based on the width of carriageway of the highway. Generally, in case of a single lane, the lane width is of 3.75 meters, while in case of multi-lane National Highways, each of the lanes have a width of 3.5 meters.
As of February 2008, out of the total length of 7 thousand kilometers of completed highways, 14% had four or more lanes and about 59% had 2-lanes or are double-laned, while the rest (27%) of the National Highway network had single or intermediate lane. In addition, by 2008, India had awarded numerous contracts on a public–private partnership and build-operate-transfer model to expand its nationwide road network.
As of September 2011, India had completed and placed in use the following newly built highways:[7]
The above 14,277 kilometers of highways connect most of the major manufacturing centers, commercial and cultural cities of India.[16]
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is the authority responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways entrusted to it. As of 2008, the NHAI is undertaking the developmental activities under National Highways Development Project (NHDP) in phases. In addition to implementation of NHDP, the NHAI is also responsible for implementing other projects on National Highways, primarily road connectivity to major ports in India.
| Lanes | Length (km) | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Single Lane / Intermediate lane | 18,350 | 27% |
| Double lane | 39,079 | 59% |
| Four Lane/Six lane/Eight Lane | 9,325 | 14% |
| Total | 66,754 | 100% |
The State Highways provide linkages with the National Highways, district headquarters, important towns, tourist centres and minor ports and carry the traffic along major centers within the state. These arterial routes provides connectivity to important towns and cities within the state with National Highways or State Highways of the neighboring states. Their total length is about 137,712 km.
The Ministry of State for Surface Transport in India administers the national highway system, and state highways and other state roads are maintained by state public works departments. The central and state governments share responsibilities for road building and maintaining Indian roads. [17]
These are important roads within a district connecting areas of production with markets and connecting these with each other or with the State Highways & National Highways. It also connects Taluka headquarters and rural areas to District headquarters within the state.
| State/UT | Single lane (km) | Intermediate lane (km) | Double lane (km) | Multilane (km) | Total (km) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kerala | 18900 | ||||
| Tamil Nadu | 4,797 | 757 | 1,761 | 47 | 7,362 |
The rural roads in India forms a substantial portion of the Indian road network. Their total length in 2005 was 26,50,000 km,which was about 80 percent of all types of roads in india. These roads are in poor shape, affecting the rural population and Indian farmer's ability to transfer produce to market post-harvest.
For the development of these rural roads, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (or "Prime Minister Rural Roads Scheme"), was launched in December 2000 by the Indian government to provide connectivity to unconnected rural habitations. The scheme envisions that these roads will be constructed and maintained by the village panchayats.
In a 2011 report, The Economist noted the rural road scheme and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee to be India’s biggest single welfare project, costing over $8 billion a year. Alone, it eats up over 3% of all public spending in India. The report claims Jairam Ramesh, the minister in charge of the central government department administering the program, criticizes uneven, patchy implementation of the scheme. He describes wasteful construction of items such as roads that quickly crumble away. The results, in many areas, fall short of the huge sums spent. The funds aimed to employ local villagers through their panchayats is not changing the quality of rural roads, rather ending up in wasteful spending and corrupt government officials’ pockets. The gloomiest estimates suggest two-thirds of allocated scheme funds is being squandered. A review published by the Ministry in September 2011 found that skilled technicians were unavailable at almost every site. There were rules banning the use of machinery or contractors, labour is usually by shovel, resulting in patchy construction of roads, drains, ponds, dams and other assets that are of very poor quality. The government scheme has failed to improve India’s awful rural infrastructure. These rural roads get washed away each monsoon, only to be rebuilt, badly, the following year.[18]
The main roads in India are under huge pressure and in great need of modernization in order to handle the increased requirements of the Indian economy. In addition to maintenance, the expansion of the network and widening of existing roads is becoming increasingly important. This would then enable the roads to handle increased traffic, and also allow for a corresponding increase in the average movement speed on India's roads. Presently, lane capacity is low and only about 16% of India's roads are four lanes or above.[9] In addition, approximately a quarter of all India's highways are congested, in some cases reducing truck and bus speeds to 30-40 km/h (19-25 mph).[1] Road maintenance remains under-funded, and some 40 percent of villages in India lack access to all-weather roads.[1]
Due to decades of bureaucratic and procedural difficulties, the road network has suffered long delays. Recently however, political leaders in India are making efforts to prioritize the modernization and expansion of the road network. However, there are still other environmental, logistical, and local issues contributing to delay in development of the road infrastructure. For instance, although the government itself owns a wide corridor around the center of roads called the Right of Way (ROW), over many years, poor and landless people have built houses and other property along the roadside. Farmers whose fields adjoined the road had their crops encroach up to the side of the road. Further, other resources are located along roadsides, whether they be trees, pathways to water resources, streams that were used for their water, etc.
According to a 2007 report, trucking goods from Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days.[19] Taxes and bribes are common between state borders; Transparency International estimates that truckers pay annually US$5 billion in bribes.[19][20] India also has the largest number of road fatalities in the world with 118,000 deaths in 2008.[21][22]
The World Health Organization compilation of road network safety data for major economies found India to have the highest number of road fatalities in the World, with 105,000 road-accident caused deaths in 2006.[23] However, adjusted for India's larger population, the accident and fatalities rates are similar to major economies. Over 2004-2007, India had a road fatality rate of 132 deaths per million citizens, compared to 131 deaths per million citizens in the United States. Non-fatal accident rates reported on Indian roads was 429 accidents per million citizens, compared to 412 accidents per million citizens in China, and 1101 accidents per million citizens in the United States. The report notes that not all accidents in India and China are reported and recorded.
A 2005 research article found Indian cities as extremely congested — the average bus speed is 6–10 km/h in many large cities. Because of the congestion in Indian roads the fuel efficiency of the vehicles is also very low. This increases the overall fuel consumption per equivalent kilometer travelled, besides resulting in heavy pollution since the engines run very inefficiently at such low speeds.[24] Pollutants from poor road network and resultant poor fuel efficiencies include hydrocarbons, NOx, SOx, methane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide - all of which cause health problems, adverse climate effects and related environmental damage.
Due to rising prices of petroleum, being a non-renewable resource, some have urged the Indian government to focus instead on improving public transport like the Indian Railways and rapid transit systems.[25]
India's recent efforts to build modern highways and improve its road network has made a significant difference in trucking logistics. According to DHL, a global logistics company, the average time to truck shipments from New Delhi to Bengaluru (Bangalore), a 2000+ kilometer journey, had dropped in 2008, to about five days.[26] By 2010, the average time to complete a road trip from New Delhi to Mumbai, a 1400+ kilometer journey, had dropped to about 35 hours. In contrast, a similar journey takes about half the time in China, and one third in European Union countries.
In a 2010 report, KPMG - one of the world's largest audit and advisory services company - noted marked improvements in Indian road network and logistics efficiencies in recent years.[27] The report also identified the competitive challenges faced by India. Some findings of this report include:
The KPMG report also notes that India's road network logistics and transportation bottlenecks hinder its GDP growth by one to two percent (US$16 billion - US$32 billion). In India's 2010 per capita income basis, this is equivalent to a loss of about 10 million new jobs every year.
Poor rural roads and traffic congestion inside the cities remains a challenge in India. The planned addition of over 12,000 kilometers of expressways in the next 10 years may help address some of such issues.
The constraints and issues with Indian road network differ from one state to another. Some states, such as Gujarat, have remarkably better road network than others. In a 2011 report, The Economist notes that Gujarat's infrastructure competes with Guangdong in China, and with double digit growth rates, Gujarat continues to outpace growth in other Indian states. Beyond better road networks, The Economist article claims the state government of Gujarat has kept red tape to a minimum, does not ask for bribes, and does not interfere with entrepreneurial corporations. The state, the article claims has less onerous labour laws, reliable electricity and effective bureaucracy.[28]
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