National highways of India

The National highways in India are a network of trunk roads that is owned by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It is constructed and managed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), and the public works departments (PWD) of state governments.

National highways of India
Renumbered National Highways map of India (Schematic)

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is the nodal agency responsible for building, upgrading, and maintaining most of the National Highways network. It operates under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) is a major effort to expand and upgrade the network of highways. NHAI often uses a public–private partnership model for highway development, maintenance, and toll-collection.

In India, National Highways are at-grade roads, whereas Expressways are controlled-access highways where entrance and exit is controlled by the use of ramps that are incorporated into the design of the expressway.

Characteristics
A dual carriageway section of NH 48 connecting Delhi to Gurgaon

India has 142,126 km (88,313 mi) of National Highways as of April 2019.[1]

National Highways constituted 2.7% of India's total road network, but carried about 40% of road traffic, as of 2013.[2] In 2016, the government vowed to double the highway length from 96,000 to 200,000 km.[3]

The majority of existing highways are two-lane roads (one lane in each direction), though much of this is being expanded to four or more lanes. Some sections of the network are toll roads. Only a few highways are built with concrete. Bypasses have been constructed around larger towns and cities to provide uninterrupted passage for highway traffic. Some existing roads have been reclassified as National Highways.

History

The National Highways Act, 1956[4] provided for private investment in the building and maintenance of the highways.

The National Highways Authority of India was established by the National Highways Authority of India Act, 1988. Section 16(1) of the Act states that the function of NHAI is to develop, maintain, and manage the National Highways and any other highways vested in, or entrusted to, it by the Government of India.

In 1998 India launched a massive program of highway upgrades, called the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), in which the main north–south and east–west corridors and highways connecting the four metropolitan cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata) have been fully paved and widened into four-lane highways. Some of the busier National Highway sectors in India were also converted to four- or six-lane limited-access highways.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways adopted a new systematic numbering of National Highways in April 2010.[5] It is a systematic numbering scheme based on the orientation and the geographic location of the highway. The new system indicates the direction of National Highways whether they are east–west (odd numbers) or north–south (even numbers). It also indicates the geographical region where they are with even numbers increasing from east to west starting from NH2 and odd numbers increasing from north to south starting from NH1.[6]

Bharatmala, a centrally-sponsored and funded road and highways project of the Government of India [7] with a target of constructing 83,677 km (51,994 mi)[8] of new highways, has been started in 2018. Phase I of the Bharatmala project involves the construction of 34,800 km of highways (including the remaining projects under NHDP) at an estimated cost of ₹5.35 lakh crore (US$75 billion) by 2021-22.[9]

Statewise
National Highways in India, by state and union territories and maintaining agency [10][11]
State / Union Territory State PWD NHAI NHIDCL [12] Length (km)
Andaman and Nicobar Islands 87331
Andhra Pradesh 6,286
Arunachal Pradesh 1,0352,537
Assam 1,0103,845
Bihar 4,839
Chandigarh 15
Chhattisgarh 3,232
Dadra and Nagar Haveli 31
Daman and Diu 22
Delhi 79
Goa 262
Gujarat 5,017
Haryana 2,641
Himachal Pradesh 3202,643
Jammu & Kashmir 4362,601
Jharkhand 2,661
Karnataka 6,761
Kerala 1,782
Lakshadweep 0
Madhya Pradesh 7,884
Maharashtra 15,437
Manipur 1,7511,746
Meghalaya 8231,204
Mizoram 3721422.5
Nagaland 3241,547
Odisha 4,837
Puducherry 64
Punjab 2,769
Rajasthan 7,906
Sikkim 595463
Tamil Nadu 5,381
Tripura 5733,786
Telangana 854
Uttarakhand 6602,842
Uttar Pradesh 8,711
West Bengal 42,998
India total 48,590[13] 7,990 115,435

Trivia
gollark: Where are the s'limes?
gollark: Install potatOS.
gollark: `root`
gollark: What?
gollark: I hope I'm not doing anything horribly insecure with my stuff...

See also

References and notes
  1. "Ministry of Road Transport and Highways". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  2. Mahapatra, Dhananjay (2 July 2013). "NDA regime constructed 50% of national highways laid in last 30 years: Centre". The Times of India. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  3. "National Highways road length to be increased from 96,000 km to 2,000,000 km: Nitin Gadkari". The Financial Express. 17 December 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  4. "The National Highways Act, 1956". Retrieved 2 December 2012.
  5. "Rationalisation of Numbering Systems of National Highways" (PDF). New Delhi: Department of Road Transport and Highways. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 August 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2012.
  6. "New numbers for national highways". The Times of India. 21 October 2011. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  7. "Bharat Mala: PM Narendra Modi's planned Rs 14,000 crore road from Gujarat to Mizoram", The Economic Times, New Delhi, 29 April 2015
  8. "Ministry proposes construction of 20,000 km of roads under Bharat Mala project", The Economic Times, New Delhi, 9 January 2016
  9. "Bharatmala Pariyojana - A Stepping Stone towards New India | National Portal of India". www.india.gov.in. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  10. "National Highways Summary - Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India". morth.nic.in. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  11. "Welcome to NHAI". www.nhai.org. Archived from the original on 15 February 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  12. http://nhidcl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/All-projects.pdf
  13. http://nhai.gov.in/writereaddata/Portal/Images/pdf/AnnualReport201516.pdf
  14. "New numbers for national highways". Maps of India.
  15. "List of highways in Kerala". ListKerala.com.
  16. "National Highway 47A". India9.com.
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