Ministry of Road Transport & Highways year-end review
Dec 28, 2016: The year 2016 has been a significant one for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, when road safety emerged as the central theme of almost its entire range of activities. While the Ministry pushed ahead to expand the National Highways network in the country, it was not enough to just build highways. It was equally important to ensure that the highways were safe for the commuters.
As a signatory to Brasilia Declaration, India is committed to reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020. Although efforts in this direction had started earlier, the year 2016 saw the Ministry taking major steps towards fulfilling this commitment. These steps include overhauling the institutional and statutory framework, employing engineering solutions to build safer roads, laying down standards for safer vehicles, building an environment for better enforcement of traffic regulations and improving emergency care.
A total length of 5,688 kilometre of construction of national highways were awarded upto November 2016. A total length of 4021 kilometre of highways constructed upto November 2016. The Government has approved a plan for constructing 1,000 km of Expressways along High Density Corridors like Vadodara-Mumbai Corridor and Delhi-Meerut Corridor.
Logistic Efficiency Enhancement Programme (LEEP) aims to enhance the freight transportation in India through improving cost, time, tracking and transferability of consignments through infrastructure, procedural and IT interventions. The parks are expected to serve four key functions: Freight aggregation and distribution, multimodal freight movement, storage and warehousing, and value-added services such as custom clearances. The ministry has shortlisted 15 locations with the highest freight movement for the development of multimodal logistics parks worth Rs 32,853 crore. The locations are in the states of Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. 44 Economic Corridors, 170 feeder routes and inter-city corridors, 35 logistics parks and 191 choke points have been identified for development to improve logistics efficiency of National Highways.
India is funding construction of 69 Bridges on the Tamu-Kyigone-Kalewa Road (149.70 kilometre) section and construction of 120.74 kilometre road between Kalewa and Yargi section of the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway, in Myanmar to improve connectivity with South East Asia by road. The Trilateral Highway starts from Moreh (Manipur) in India up to Mae Sot in Thailand through Myanmar. Construction of 130 km length stretch of road connecting Moreh (India)/Tamu (Myanmar) to Kalewa in Myanmar has already been completed by Border Roads Organization of India.
