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Thursday , 28 March 2024

‘We will use technology for the maintenance of highways’

What changes can we foresee in the mode of construction?

We are getting formidable response for hybrid-annuity model but my prima-facie views are that for a period of one-two years, we should focus on the EPC mode. If I have to construct it fast, I should go in for EPC, construct the highway and then monetise it.

If there are about 70 or 80km stretches of road which are public-funded, we will also be having the toll plazas. The idea is to monetise the entire stretch. The advantage is that for any investor, the major hurdles that would stall a project have already been addressed: land-acquisition, utility shifting, tree cutting or environmental clearances, location of toll-plazas and construction. Once you have constructed an asset, thereafter, the best thing to do is to monetise it. The agency which steps in as an investor takes care of O & M. The risk is minimised and it leads to long term growth. We are not sure how many stretches we will be giving away; it depends on the response and the experiences. I would consider bundling them in 10-12 stretches in one go after some time.

The Government has kept an ambitious target for Highway Construction. How does it work out?

The highway construction is done by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways and NHAI. Most of the highways constructed by MoRTH are executed by the state Public Works Departments. The bulk of these projects which MoRTH handles through NHAI is two lane highways with shoulders. NHAI is also doing some two-lane projects which were transferred but now, all those new projects transferred to NHAI for execution are four or six-lanes projects along with service roads in few locations.

Measuring that construction in terms of linear length may not be true. The best way is to convert it into lane kilometres. For example, last year NHAI constructed 1988 linear length kilometres which is a combination of two, four and six lane roads. This year, we have done 2628km which is again a linear length. When I put alongside the service roads that we have constructed and I convert into lane kilometres, I get 9700 lane kilometres. The linear length of two, four and six lane combination does not give a true and fair view.

The industrial corridors are identified as economic corridors. The highway does carry the freight traffic. For example; in some places the dominant transport happens to be the passenger transport. The Delhi, Jaipur, Vadodara and Mumbai highways are more like economic corridors. So 40% of the vehicles plying on these are the freight vehicles but these are also being used by the trucks and even, cars.

The most important thing is to have the toll operators and the concessionaires on board with us to ensure that 100 percent of the lanes are equipped with FASTag and ETC readers.

Can you throw some light on the implementation of FASTags?

As of today, NHAI has 371 toll plazas out of which 367 are operational. Two in J&K and two in North-East are not operational because of various reasons. When the ETC programme was taken up, single lanes were to be equipped on either side with ETC or FASTag readers and termed as FASTag lanes. But, there has been a quantum jump in the use of FASTag post the suspension of toll collection after demonetization.

From around 60 to 70,000 FASTags, the number has crossed five lakhs within the last three to four months. So, there has been an exponential growth. But, I look at it more like a challenge in the sense that out of 370, as per my information, close to 240 are equipped with the fast tag readers. Another about 120 have the handheld readers which is not what it should be but then, I feel that if a road user has to have comfort, his comfort depends on how soon he passes through a toll plaza without queuing up. So, we had not prescribed any norms regarding the number of lanes on any toll plaza.

Now, we are internally setting a benchmark that when any new stretch of Highway is constructed, it should have a ratio of 1:4, i.e., if it is a four-lane highway it must have 16 lanes – eight lanes on either side. We have toll plazas that have may be four or six lanes on either side. This requires some additional land acquisition. But the most important thing is that first of all, we must have the toll operators and the concessionaires on board with us to ensure that 100% of the lanes are equipped with FASTag and ETC readers. If it is a single lane and the number of fast tag users is increasing and they have to queue up, the users would be very dissatisfied. So we are conscious of that and we propose very shortly to call and have a meeting with all our concessionaires to share this vision with us. This is one part.

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