Centre seeks state funding support for urban NH decongestion projects

States can choose from four funding models, including sharing land acquisition costs, to support ring roads, bypasses and elevated corridors around cities

The government is moving to decongest national highways in India's cities by building ring roads, bypasses and elevated corridors in and around urban agglomerations. The Road Transport and Highways Ministry has released its urban decongestion policy, asking states to contribute to the development of this infrastructure.

 

The policy mandates that states pay half of the land acquisition costs for these national highway projects or choose between value capture financing, land pooling, or partial land acquisition with goods and services tax (GST) sops.

 

“Normally, land acquisition costs are in the range of 30-50 per cent of the total project cost in urban areas. The state government may express its willingness to share 50 per cent of the total cost of land acquisition,” the policy said.

 

Under another option, the states can choose to forego their share of GST on the construction cost of the project. GST is leviable on the total civil cost of NH projects, which accounts for 60-70 per cent of the total project cost. Consequently, the levy of GST accounts for 10-13 per cent of the total project cost, with the state component accounting for 5-6.5 per cent.

 

“The state government can opt for sharing 25 per cent of the cost of land acquisition and provide reimbursement of the state component of GST (i.e. SGST) and royalties on minerals,” the policy said.

 

The need for decongestion stems from the government's experience of creating infrastructure in cities without achieving success in easing bottlenecks. On the contrary, the new decongestion interventions face fresh bottlenecks.

 

“However, many of these interventions have been developed as non-access-controlled bypasses or ring roads. The consequence of this development has been unregulated ribbon development along the National Highways that soon impedes smooth flow of traffic and creates congestion, negating the effect of the investment made in the development of the ring road or the bypass,” the policy document said.

 

The government now plans access-controlled roads to separate city traffic from commercial or passenger traffic transiting across cities.

 

“In order to deter ribbon development along newly developed ring roads and bypasses in or around urban agglomerations and to ensure seamless connectivity for through traffic on NHs, all projects for urban decongestion of NHs shall be taken up for development as fully access-controlled corridors of minimum four-lane configuration with closed tolling facilities,” the policy said.

 

“This would enable the design speed of 100-120 kmph for both freight and passenger vehicles to be maintained over time,” it added.

 

These new projects will have interchanges or slip roads to connect to cities at a minimum interval of five kilometres.

 

States will have a prohibited development control zone of 15 metres on either side of the NH bypass or ring road, notified as a green zone under state town planning laws, where development will be prohibited unless it is for public transport requirements such as bus stops or mobility infrastructure, public utility infrastructure such as electricity, water or sewerage pipelines, or green-zone infrastructure.

 

In the original Bharatmala plan, 191 towns and cities with populations of more than 100,000 were identified on major NH corridors where congestion points led to a reduction in average speed on the corridor by more than 10 per cent when traffic crossed the town or city, compared with the average speed on the corridor outside the town or city.