NHAI considering expressway connecting Hyderabad, Amaravati.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) Chairman, Raghav Chandra, recently said expressways that connect Hyderabad with Vijayawada-Amaravati, Nagpur and Bengaluru were under consideration of the premier body.

Mr. Chandra, who was addressing the inaugural session of a two-day national conference on highways construction technology here, said this while referring to the major projects of NHAI. “We have 30,000-km projects in the pipeline,” he said of a list that includes expressways as well as four or six laning of highways. The conference is being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

While the Hyderabad-Vijayawada-Amaravati Expressway would be 278-km long, the Nagpur-Hyderabad highway will be 505 km and the Hyderabad-Bengaluru link - 574 km. Apart from these, the NHAI is looking at Kanpur-Lucknow expressway (75 km) and a 600-km long Delhi-Amritsar-Katra expressway, he said.

Land acquisition for the Bengaluru-Chennai expressway was in full swing, he said, adding that the alignment for the project had been approved by the governments of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.

Noting that 97 projects (6,631 km) worth Rs. 1 lakh crore were to be awarded by the NHAI in the current financial year, he said the focus of the highway development was not just output but outcome based.

The change sought to measure the satisfaction levels of road users after the journey and reduce transaction cost.

On the areas of concern, he listed the time taken to prepare detailed project report and the quality of some material used by the contractors to reduce cost.

“We are particularly concerned about the time that DPR preparation takes,” Mr. Chandra said, adding that some of the consultants entrusted with the task do not go to the field, but cook up project details by just looking up Google maps. This posed problems when the road development is undertaken, necessitating acquisition of new lands resulting in projects getting delayed.

Hence, the NHAI has made it “compulsory now that all our project reports should be matched by using Lidar [surveying] technology,” he added.

It should be done either terrestrially or aerially. For the Outer Ring Road around Amaravati, the NHAI has allowed aerial Lidar to save on time.

THE HINDU