For the Indian motorist, the last couple of years must have been outright frustrating. If the constant waves of restrictions and lockdowns delayed any outdoor trips, the semiconductor chip crisis followed by the steep rise in fossil fuel prices further deprived us of any remaining desire to venture outside. However, a new year brings promise - a promise to better ourselves. Though, a closer look at the infrastructure improvement plans drawn out for the coming years might make you believe the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways also seem to have caught on the same promising vibe.

Road Transport and Highways Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari assures that India’s highways would soon match the standards seen in the US, and that’s the kind of vision our developing nation desperately needs. Fortunately, the vision extends much further than just improving the standard of our highways. Plans to extend our highways were already in place since the current government’s reign, followed by Shri Gadkari’s vision of incorporating the concept of greener and EV-compatible highways, a roadside safety system, and the emergence of alternative fuel coming into effect soon. Let us analyse these promised developmental plans and assess their status.

HIGHWAYS
Bharatmala Project
The Golden Quadrilateral was a good case study to comprehend what limited our country’s growth even though we received independence decades ago. The Modi-led government acknowledged the fact, which is why the Bharatmala Project was conceived back in 2017. Touted as India’s second-largest highway construction project after the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), the Bharatmala Project was devised to improve connectivity, especially along with the far flung areas and economic corridors.
 
Since the approval of this project in October 2017, around 65,000 kilometres of national highways have been constructed under this project split into two phases. Under phase 1, around 34,800 kilometres of road were constructed over a period of five years. Till now, work for about 19,482 kilometres has been awarded, and completion of about 7,952 kilometres of length has been achieved under the programme.
Our government has drawn up predefined categories under which the new road projects would get classified. Some of these categories constitute Economic Corridor, Feeder Route, Border Road and International Connectivity, Port Connectivity and Coastal Road, Greenfield Expressways, and the remaining incomplete projects under NHDP, which comprise the construction and maintenance of about 10,000 kilometres of new roads.

Around 24 expressway projects have been conceived to interconnect cities and towns while also building access corridors to inaccessible areas of our country. Some of the more popular upcoming expressways include Delhi-Vadodara, Bengaluru-Chennai while the access corridors are set to stretch between areas like Kharagpur-Siliguri, Indore-Hyderabad and even Amritsar-Jamnagar. But the most prominent expressway project slated to become the biggest metropolitan connector between Delhi and Mumbai, spans a total of 1,380 kilometres. Touted to become India’s longest expressway, the Delhi-Mumbai expressway, when operational, would reduce the travel time between both metropolitan cities from the current 26 hours to just 12 hours. This highway might just turn out to be India’s idea of an autobahn. The deadline for this project’s completion was March 2023 though one can expect that to get delayed due the disruption of work caused by the pandemic.

Advanced Construction Techniques 
The New Year also saw Union Defence Minister Shri Rajnath Singh and Road Transport and Highways Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari jointly lay down the foundation stone for the 63-kilometre long Lucknow-Kanpur expressway. Compared to other projects, this is a relatively small stretch of highway construction, however, the expenses involved sum up to a mammoth Rs 4,200 crores. The reason for this being utilisation of modern techniques. 
The Lucknow-Kanpur stretch will be built with a 3D Automated Machine Guidance (AMG) module for highway building, a first in the nation. This technique allows officials and contractors to get live updates of the progress on their phones or computer while further doubling the construction speed. The upcoming expressway will be a six-lane affair that would slash the travel time between two cities from 120 minutes to just 55 minutes. The deadline for the same is 2023.

Steamrolling Speed
While on the subject of rapid construction, Shri Gadkari commented, “At one time we were constructing two km of road per day, and today we are constructing 38 km per day”. The minister further claimed that India created a World Record by constructing 2.5 kilometres four lanes concrete road in a duration of just 24 hours and 26 kilometres of single lane bitumen road in just 21 hours during July last year. 
While speaking in the Rajya Sabha last year, Shri Gadkari declared the total length of national highways across India increased from about 91,287 kilometres in April 2014 to about 140,937 kilometres till the end of November last year under his leadership. The above-mentioned time period also saw projects worth 82,058 kilometres were awarded whilst reporting completion in about 68,068 kilometres of roads.

Heightened Need For Highway Safety Services
According to a report by the World Bank, India accounts for 11 per cent of the global deaths in road accidents, the highest in the world. The report claims, “It (India) has one percent of the world’s vehicles but accounts for 11 percent of all road crash deaths, witnessing 53 road crashes every hour; killing one person every four minutes”. Shri Gadkari even said that the road accident scenario in India is more “dangerous than the COVID-19 pandemic” and that he will formulate policies to protect the interest of the poor and embark on reformative steps.
One of those steps includes the Intelligent Transport System (ITS), a technology that can detect any accident and receive alerts to ensure that an ambulance reaches the spot within 10-15 minutes.
He said the ITS is a revolutionary state-of-the-art technology that will achieve traffic efficiency by minimising traffic problems, prompting efficient infrastructure usage, enriching users with prior information about traffic, reducing travel time, and enhancing commuters’ safety and comfort. The first system has been installed on Eastern Peripheral Expressway at Dasna, Ghaziabad.

Green Corridors
Another initiative launched by Shri Gadkari includes the Green Highways Policy launched in 2015. The policy aims to promote the greening of highway corridors with the participation of community, farmers, private sector, NGOs, and government institutions. When asked about how these green corridors would benefit the country, the minister said, “It would help the country in achieving zero pollution. We will be using materials like plastic and rubber in bitumen. There will be a large number of green tree plantations on both sides”. He further stated that 1 per cent of the total project cost of all highway projects will be kept aside for the highway plantation and its maintenance. This plantation policy will generate employment opportunities for about five lakh people from rural areas.
The idea of 'saving' by Shri Gadkari goes beyond the environment and extends onto fuel and time as well. “In the current system, we are changing two lanes to four and four lanes to six, but they are consuming more fuel and time,” he said. Hence, his idea of green highways will essentially be completely new roads that would only be straight in alignment, further saving fuel and journey time.

TRANSPORT
EV-compliant Highways
Shri Gadkari has been quite vocal about the shift to electrification. However, electrification requires not just electric vehicles but a more extensive charging network spread across our country’s roads. Hence, to support the upcoming mass-market EVs with adequate charging infrastructure, the minister has also conceptualised an e-highway concept, which he claims to be his pet project. 
“We are trying to make Jaipur-Delhi Expressway into an E-highway where the trucks and buses would run on the electric cables just like a train”, explains the minister. This concept would allow commercial electric transport to charge on the go, ensuring an energy-efficient solution instead of the user battling range anxiety issues. The world’s first e-highway that recharges the travelling EV’s batteries on it was opened in Sweden in 2018, followed by Germany in 2019. India won’t lag behind in electric adoption if the Jaipur-Delhi e-highway sees effective application in the next two years. Though, the pandemic may have delayed this dream.

FUEL
Alternate Fuel
The world has made it evident that electric power is the direct substitute for fossil fuels. Fortunately, India appears to believe otherwise. Instead of making the same mistake by banking on a sole energy resource, the subcontinent’s transportation future would rely on multiple energy resources. Apart from the obvious impending electrification, India will be looking towards CNG, LPG, ethanol, bio-LNG, hydrogen and green hydrogen - the latter considered to be the fuel of the future by the minister. 

Hydro-Power
“I have a plan to run buses, trucks, and cars on green hydrogen that would be produced using sewage water and solid waste in cities. I am trying to create value from waste,” declared Shri Gadkari during the 6th National Summit on Financial Inclusion. The minister goes on to explain, “Green hydrogen can be made from bio-mass, bio-organic waste and dirty water, and can be a substitute for coal import. Steel plants, tractors, buses, railways and all other industries will run on green hydrogen. This is the future and now farmers should not only produce ethanol, bio-LNG but also green hydrogen and tap the huge opportunity”. 
Upon enquiring about the feasibility of green hydrogen in India, Gadkari answered, “In the first week of January, we are starting a pilot project where we would be getting a green hydrogen car from Indian Oil Corporation Limited's Faridabad laboratory which already produces it. It is an experiment to show people that using this form of fuel is possible.” While Gadkari didn’t mention the details of this green-hydrogen powered car, it is most likely to be a Toyota Mirai as the minister already tested one on an experiential drive back in 2019.

Plant-Power
Until mid-2021, Shri Gadkari appealed to carmakers to develop flex-fuel engines in the next two years. The flex-fuel engines would allow the vehicle to run on the usual fossil fuel, a blend of petrol/diesel and ethanol and even on a 100 per cent ethanol too. This would allow India to reduce its dependence on crude oil imports while further incentivising the local production of ethanol via our massive agricultural sector. The ethanol production brings employment and a steady revenue stream for the local farmers, thereby increasing our country’s GDP. Reports suggested the ministry would make it mandatory for carmakers to offer flex-fuel engines post 2023, but Shri Gadkari cleared the air by declaring it a mere advisory. The assurance from top officials of car manufacturers like Toyota Motor Corporation, Suzuki and Hyundai Motor India of the introduction of flex-fuel engines made him relax his upcoming norm.

 

Conversion Kits
While the future dictates the demand for multiple energy resources, we can’t simply neglect the existing machines at our disposal. To have them converted into cleaner powertrain technology would go a long way in reducing waste while enabling you to travel with cleaner, no emissions at the comfort of your existing vehicle. Hence, several companies across metro cities such as Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai have sprung up that offer CNG or electric conversion kits. Delhi Auto Spares is one such government-approved outlet that retrofits CNG kits to petrol-powered vehicles. Similar retailers can be found for EV retro fitments as well.

Change Is The Only Constant
Infrastructure contributes significantly to a nation’s economy. It’s not just about the ease of travel, but these extended road networks further facilitate and ease out supply routes. Accessible and extended supply routes ensure a larger part of the country remains intricately connected which further entails a promise for collective growth. 
While some of these projects may seem too expensive to fabricate, our skills as the world’s second-biggest population should be put to test. The added requirement of the workforce would tempt the rural crowd to contribute, thereby promoting employment. Even the need for alternate fuels would reduce spending on crude oil imports, which constitutes a hefty percentage of our country’s expenses. Drawing that down with cleaner fuels that don’t add to our polluted air would certainly improve our population’s health rates, ultimately contributing to our country’s economy. And it is this far-sighted vision of some of our leaders, especially that of Shri Gadkari that holds a chance to transform India into a developed country.