Corridor concept to road development

Abstract

he recently announced Bharatmala Pariyojana is an attempt to bring back the corridor concept to road development. Though the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) also started with corridors (the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ), the North-South-East-West (NSEW) and others including port connectivity in various phases), over years, it had settled down to a package concept. While a grand project of 83677 kms has been announced at a cost of Rs 6.92 lakh crore, the sharper focus is on 35800 kms at a cost of Rs 5.35 lakh crore. Interestingly, out of the 34800 kms of highways planned in phase I, 10,000 kms are a carry over from the NHDP. The new 24800 kms have been arrived at based on OD (origin destination) surveys and traffic assessments at over 1500 points. While as a concept it is good, unfortunately, the OD survey carried out by RITES, the transport consultancy public sector under the Indian Railways, is dated at 2007. The traffic assessments are based on a combination of manual and automatic counts (including camera based) and highlight congestion areas.............