The Government of India has subsumed all its domestic roads and highways projects under its umbrella program named Bharatmala Pariyojna, with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) as in-charge. The NHAI’s 80,000-km-plus Bharatmala infrastructure initiative involves projects such as the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), Wayside Amenities, Electronic Toll Collection, and much more.

The projects aim at integrating advanced technology into the highways sector and overhauling national highways. These undertakings also include a dedicated mobile application (Sukhad Yatra) for highway commuters, Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), industrial drones and remote sensing for highway projects, GPS tolling, green highways, and solar farms.
Of these, WSA, ETC, Sukhad Yatra, the ATMS, and drones and LiDARs are already functional or in various phases of completion. Other initiatives such as GPS tolling are in their pilot phase and are showing promise.

Domestic Projects

WSA consists of three substructures – Highway Nest, Highway Nest (Mini), Highway Village – that provide civic amenities and safety to motorists on national highways on par with global standards. Several Nest and Nest (Mini) structures have already been constructed on many national highways. Village, the largest of them all sprawling over five-acres of land, is in its initial construction phase, and will act as a large ‘highway port’ and house advanced amenities.

The ETC system has been introduced at several Toll gates across the nation, and aims to promote the government’s drive to digitalise the public sector and its services. It uses Automatic Vehicle Detection technology and RFID-encoded stickers to read the Toll invoice and deduct the fee automatically and instantly.
Sukhad Yatra is a highway-utility mobile application that provides navigation, mapping, and electronic-toll-payment services for national highways users.
The ATMS is a centralised hub that consists of a string of technologies to process and handle data on highway-related incidents including accidents, gridlocks and traffic jams, natural disasters, and others. The data on the incident is used to deploy the suitable transport and staff.

All domestic highway projects are currently being monitored and supported by drones and LiDARs.

International Projects

Besides upgrading its inland roads, transport, and logistics, the NHAI is providing India with international road connectivity with its 1,360-km India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (IMTTH) project. The IMTTH starts from Moreh in Manipur (India), traverses through Myanmar, and ends at Mae Sot in Thailand.

The project proposes the construction of 69 bridges on the Tamu-Kyigone-Kalewa road section (nearly 150 km) and Kalewa-Yargi road section (over 120 km) in Myanmar to improve road connectivity with South-East Asia.
As part of this proposal, India has already finished the construction of a 130-km road connecting Moreh and Tamu in India to Kalewa in Myanmar. Several stretches on the Thailand-Myanmar side of the project are already completed. The construction or upgrading of the rest of the project awaits the finalisation of tenders and contracts, for which consultants have been already appointed.
The international highway project is being built under India’s Look-East policy and will facilitate trade between India and other ASEAN countries and the rest of South-East Asia.

The India-ASEAN road connectivity project may extend to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The trade route will generate annually an estimated USD 70 billion in incremental GDP output and 20 million in incremental aggregate employment by 2025 for the nations involved.

Besides these, India and the NHAI are also a part of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, East-Asia Summit, United Nations Economic & Social Commission for Asia & the Pacific, the Trans-Asian Railway network, and several other committees, and are currently working on several Look East infrastructure projects.

For more information: http://www.nhai.gov.in/