Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari said the speed of national highway construction has quadrupled reaching 37 Kilometers per day from 9 Kilometers per day before 2014. Mr Gadkari said this while addressing CII National Conference on Highways of India’s future: Smart, Safe and Sustainable in New Delhi today. Reiterating the Prime Minister’s vision of making the Indian economy $5 trillion and third in the world, the Minister emphasised the essence of developing infrastructure, which plays a crucial role in attaining this feat. He expressed happiness over the decreasing logistic cost to 9 percent of the GDP from earlier 16 percent.
He said that without infrastructure development, industries can not be developed, affecting capital investment for trade and business. He noted with the infrastructure development, there will be multiple job opportunities across different sectors including tourism. The Minister said due to enhanced road connectivity, tourism has increased threefold. He added with the 49 percent of the capital investment in tourism, there is a sound chance of generating several job opportunities. Citing the successful operation of Delhi-Dehradun expressway which has curtailed the travel time from 7 hours to 2 hours, he mentioned yet another highway from Delhi to Haridwar to be completed in a few months.
Highlighting how new roads projects have curtailed travel-time, he enlisted Delhi to Meerut has come down to 40-50 minutes from 3.5 hours earlier, Delhi to Jaipur to 2 years from 5 hours earlier, Bangalore to Chennai in 2 hours from 4 hours, Mysore to Bangalore to 1 hour from 3.5 hours.
The road minister said with the improved road connectivity with the rapid construction of tunnels, roads and bridges across the nation there has been tremendous growth in trade and commerce and tourism. He noted, 36 expressways across country, and around 1 Lakh 60 thousand crore worth of peripheral roads completed around Delhi.
The Minister noted that before 2002-2014, total Highway network was 91 thousand 287 Kilometers which increased to 1 Lakh 46 thousand 572 Kilometers during 2014-26. He also said, four-lane road connectivity increased from eighteen thousand two hundred and 78 Kilometers during 2004-14 to 49 thousand 160 Kilometers in 2014-2026. Talking about High Speed corridor, he said it has increased 12 times with 557 Kilometers Kilometers to six thousand and 788 Kilometers during 2014-2026.
