Companies in the road construction sector are set for a ₹11,000-crore bonanza, with the National Highways Authority of India sending a proposal to “retrofit” highways to improve their safety features, to the Highway Ministry.

At a conference on road safety here, NHAI Chairman Raghav Chandra said the retrofitting would involve building vehicular underpasses, crash barriers, service lanes, and so on.

Chandra said the last ten years were times of “stingy policy making”, wherein some safety features were sacrificed so as to lower project costs.

“The Planning Commission would ask why there should be six-lane bridges on four-lane roads. Explanations that it will be much more expensive to widen a bridge at a later date would be shot down,” said Chandra, recollecting his days in the Road Ministry as a Joint Secretary (Highways).

Many such decisions have led to “black spots” on highways. These are 500-metre sections that have been accident-prone over a period of two-three years.

Now, the Highway Ministry is developing a system of road safety audits for highways. Ravi Prasad, Chief Engineer, Road Ministry, noted that data collection for identifying and improving black-spots needs to be improved. For this, the Highway Ministry is trying to work out a mechanism where data collection can be done through a crowd-sourcing mechanism.

With the demand for safety auditors set to go up, the Indian Academy of Highway Engineers (IAHE) is set to start a course for safety auditors, which will be part-funded by the Ministry, said VL Patankar, Director of IAHE.

Earlier, Road Transport and Highways Secretary Sanjay Mitra said the Centre will implement road safety audits for 3,000 km of highways this year.

Related Topics