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Highway Update

A progress report on the Golden Quadrilateral - scheduled for completion by end-2004.

By P.V. Sahad

Has its share of bumps

Whether the highway makers will meet the December 2004 deadline for the first phase of the Prime Minister's ambitious Golden Quadrilateral highways project is a non-issue. So long as there's no let up in the economic benefits brought by the Rs 54,000 crore project, most people would be satisfied.

The first phase comprises the four/six-laning of highways that link the four metros of Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai. This is what India's motorists (and economic planners) are looking forward to, eagerly. For the first time, driving from Delhi to Mumbai might actually be an idea worth considering (assuming that US-style motels and the like spring up too).

The second phase, which includes the building of North-South corridor linking Srinagar to Kanyakumari and the East-West corridor connecting Silchar to Porbandar with four/six-lane highways, is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007.

So, how is the work progressing?

Quite well, thank you, according to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), which has been entrusted with the job of executing the 14,000-km project. Of the 5,846 km metro-to-metro Quadrilaterlal, 1,327 km of highway length has been completed, while the rest is under rapid implementation. Thankfully, money is no problem. The Rs 30,300 crore Phase-I has been financed through a cess on road fuel and market borrowings (Rs 18,846 crore), loans from multilateral agencies (Rs 7,862 crore) and private sector participation (Rs 3,592 crore).

Planning on Phase-II is also in full swing. Of the Rs 35,315 crore proposed to be spent on Phase-II, Rs 21,467 crore would come from a cess and market borrowings, Rs 10,538 crore from multilateral agencies and Rs 3,310 crore through private participation.

When it's all done, it would be the first significant road building achievement for many many decades, some say centuries. Of course, that won't be the end of it. Currently, over 40 per cent of India's 3.3 million km road network is unsurfaced. This is shocking, considering that road transport is the pre-dominant mode of transportation in India, accounting for nearly 65 per cent of freight and 87 per cent of passenger traffic. Traffic on Indian roads has been growing at a rate of 7-10 per cent per annum while the annual vehicular growth has been close to 12 per cent these past few years.

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