| |
According to Minister of Road Transport and Highways Kamal Nath, who was addressing the media, said that central government is “setting up Expressway Authority of India” for building express highways between major Indian cities. This step is being adopted by the government so that the transit time taken between the places comes down.
"We are in the process of setting up an Expressway Authority of India (EAI) on the lines of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to build about 17,000 km of expressways between major cities such as Mumbai-Bangalore and Bangalore-Chennai for high-speed traffic for passenger cars, buses and trucks”, he said,
An expressway division has already been put up in the NHAI and now the parliament will be approached for setting up EAI. The expressways are expected to cost at the rate of Rs.20-22 crore per km.
The expressways, which will be developed along with the state governments, will be green-field.
"Along the expressways, integrated and satellite townships can be built to decongest cities and create opportunities for uniform growth of urban areas”, he said.
A meeting of the highway ministers and state road transport minister will be held in December for discussing the issues related to this.
“The agenda will be to resolve all outstanding issues, especially the process of land acquisition, which is a major constraint in accelerating the construction of highways to achieve a target of 20 km per day," Nath said.
The other issues to be discussed are road safety, awareness, enforcement and regulation to minimise accidents on highways.
"If you have regulation and don't have enforcement, how can we avoid accidents? Awareness of road safety, observing rules and having road sense are pre-requisites for inculcating road culture”, he said.
