The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has almost finalised its ‘Vision 2047’ with a plan to have highways all around the country within a distance of 100-200 kilometres which will be multi-laned and access-controlled, News18 has learnt.
The aim of ‘Vision 2047’ is to make the roads in India at par with international standards and improve the logistics speed and, in turn, reduce logistics cost. It is expected that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who will present the Union Budget 2024 on Tuesday, will announce this in her speech.
As per an official aware of the details, the basic idea is to give India a new-age highway that can serve for a longer time and not become irrelevant within a few years.
“We plan and build a highway and even before it starts, new markets and residential areas are built around that stretch. Within no time, we get requests for a bypass and then one more and the issue never ends,” the official said, seeking anonymity.
They added that the solution that the ministry has found is that it should focus on access-controlled roads. No matter what is built around access-controlled roads, the traffic flow will not be impacted because of the crowd around. Those who wish to take the highway can use the service lane, the official added.
“So far, access-controlled roads were selected based on efficiency — roads with expected heavy traffic. Now, this will not be the case,” they added.
A grid of 200 by 200 kilometres will be drawn on a map and it will be attempted that every block gets at least one national highway. The idea is to build 50,000 kilometres of access-controlled expressways by 2047. As of now, India has just a few thousand kilometres of such expressways.
While the ministry is ending the concept of two-lane highways, it will also attempt that four-lane highways are access controlled. This will also ensure logistical efficiency.
‘Vision 2047’ is in line with the country’s aim to be developed by that year and for any nation to become developed, roads are an important parameter and should be able to sustain the economy.
Currently, the ministry is impacted by slow awarding since the last financial year. The project awarding under Bharatmala-1 has also been impacted since almost a year now.
The ministry is hopeful that ‘Vision 2047’ will give a push to awarding of new projects under it.
The ministry performed exceptionally well in the actual capital expenditure, including that from private investment, in the last financial year. The actual capital expenditure of the road ministry in the financial year 2023-24 crossed Rs 3 lakh crore.
In the last financial year, the ministry was allocated Rs 2.64 lakh crore, the highest-ever, and it managed to spend 99.93 per cent of it. It was the second time that the ministry managed to spend 99 per cent of the allocated budget. In 2022-23 also, the ministry managed to spend 99.18 per cent of the capex.
In 2023-24, the ministry constructed 12,349 km of national highway in total, much more compared to the previous two years. It is the second-best figure in the history of the ministry. The highest was 13,327 km achieved in the year 2020-21 when the Covid-19-induced lockdown was imposed.
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