The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) under the purview of the Central government’s autonomous agency, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), is initiating several domestic and global projects to advance the country’s highway infrastructure. Some of the projects include the domestic cluster project, Wayside Amenities, Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), etc.; and the global project, India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (IMTTH). These projects are proposed to modernise the highways sector, digitalise the public sector, and stimulate the country’s economic growth.

The Wayside Amenities (WSAs) project is one of the NHAI’s undertakings launched to provide basic, intermediate, and advanced amenities to highway users through three sub-structures - Highway Nest, Highway Nest (Mini) and Highway Village. The amenities include kiosks, restrooms, ATMs, parking lots, fuel stations, helipads, and more.

The NHAI is developing ETC - a digital toll-invoicing and fee-collection system - across Toll booths in the country. As of now, the digital toll payment method has been made operational at 383 Toll gates, with at least one dedicated ETC lane on each gate. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) states that the NHAI’s ETC complements the Centre’s Digital India initiative and will cut down delay and congestion motorists encounter at Toll gates.

In a call to expedite Digital India, the NHAI also launched a dedicated mobile application - Sukhad Yatra - with the assistance of ComVision (India) Pvt Ltd. The application is the first-of-its-kind digital highway-amenities solution from the government. In the first week of its launch, the highways-utility mobile application was downloaded more than 40,000 times, with an average of 250 new downloads per hour.

Apart from these projects, the NHAI also is constructing an intra-continental highway project - India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway - stretching 1,360 km from India to Thailand. The IMTTH is being built under India’s Look-East policy to facilitate trade between India and other ASEAN member countries and the rest of South-East Asia.

The Trilateral project is being implemented on the Tamu-Kyigone-Kalewa road section (nearly 150 km) and Kalewa-Yargi road section (over 120 km) in Myanmar. So far, the NHAI has finished the construction of 130-km road connecting Moreh and Tamu in India to Kalewa in Myanmar. Further, the India-ASEAN road connectivity undertaking is planned to be extended across Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

These projects are being implemented across the country and are expected to bring in development of India and the eastern half of the Subcontinent, growth in their economy, and welfare of their public sectors and trade.

For More Details Visit - www.nhai.gov.in