Ministry pushes for two-laning of NHs with states help
Highlights
NEW DELHI: The ministry of shipping, road transport and highways is preparing a cabinet note for two-laning of national highways with the assistance of state governments. The Centre is planning to involve state governments in the two-laning projects to reduce the workload of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
���The cabinet note would be finalised by the end of this month,��� a government official said. The ministry is considering forming partnerships through MoUs with state governments based on their respective capabilities. It has committed that the programme for two-laning of 20,000 kms of national highways would be formulated by March.
���The ministry intends to convert all single-lane national highways and all two-lane highways to have mandatory paved shoulders. This means increasing the width of a two-lane highway by one-and-a-half metres on both sides,��� the official said.
The two-laning programme would be under the phase IV of the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP). In the first phase, the ministry plans to develop 5,000 kms of national highways. ���NHAI has had full responsibility of phases I, II and III of NHDP. However, since the scope of work of two-laning under phase IV is not considerable, the ministry is mulling whether NHAI should get into such smaller works at all,��� sources added.
If required, the NHAI may be directly involved in some cases, officials said. Two-lane highways comprise a large chunk of the total network of national highways in the country. Of 39,000 kms of national highways in the country, 55% are two-laned. About 35% are single-lane highways and only 10% are four or six-lane highways.
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���Given the huge proportion of two-lane highways, increasing the width is essential to increase carriageway for traffic flows,��� the official said. The two-lane projects under NHDP-IV would be developed through build-operate-transfer (BOT) annuity basis. The estimated cost of this phase is approximately Rs 28,000 crore.Download
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