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Observing that expressways must not become corridors of peril due to administrative lethargy or infrastructural gaps, the Supreme Court has issued a slew of pan-India guidelines for enhancing road safety, including a ban on parking of heavy vehicles on such roads. A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and AS Chandurkar pointed out that national highways constitute two percent of India's total road length but account for nearly 30 percent of all road fatalities. A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and AS Chandurkar issued directions to the Ministry of Road and Transport, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and States and Union Territories to make roads safer, observing that the loss of even a single life to avoidable hazards like illegal parking or blackspots etc., represents a failure of the State's protective umbrella. "The loss of even a single life to avoidable hazards like illegal parking or blackspots etc., represents a failure of the State's protective umbrella. The 'Right t
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday inaugurated the Delhi-Dehradun economic corridor, which will cut travel time between the two cities to nearly half. The 213 km-long six-lane access-controlled Delhi-Dehradun economic corridor has been built at a cost of over Rs 12,000 crore. The corridor traverses through the states of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and will reduce travel time between Delhi and Dehradun from over six hours at present to around two and a half hours, according to an official statement. The Delhi-Dehradun economic corridor will play a pivotal role in strengthening regional economic growth by enhancing connectivity between major tourism and economic centres as well as opening new avenues for trade and development across the region. "The project reflects the vision of the prime minister to develop next-generation infrastructure that combines high-speed connectivity with environmental sustainability and improved quality of life for citizens," the statement .
China on Friday opened to traffic a 22.13-km-long tunnel, which it claimed to be the "world's longest", in Xinjiang province. The Tianshan Shengli tunnel, which traverses through the central Tianshan Mountains in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, has reduced a treacherous mountain journey of several hours to about 20 minutes, official media reported. According to Song Hailiang, chairman of China Communications Construction Company, the tunnel has set two world records. It is the longest expressway tunnel in the world and has the deepest vertical shaft for a highway tunnel, Song said. The tunnel is a key part of the G0711 Urumqi-Yuli Expressway, which also became operational on Friday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The expressway serves as a major transport artery linking city clusters in northern and southern Xinjiang. Stretching 2,500 km, the Tianshan Mountains span central Xinjiang, separating the provincial capital Urumqi, the largest city in the
IRB Infrastructure on Monday said its board has approved the sale of its Gandeva Ena (VM7) hybrid annuity model project, which forms part of the upcoming Delhi Mumbai Greenfield Expressway Project, to IRB InvIT Fund for Rs 513 crore. IRB Infrastructure, in a statement, said it will receive Rs 513 crore as 100 per cent equity consideration from the IRB InvIT Fund upon completion of the transfer, and the project debt will also be transferred. Consequently, IRB's consolidated net debt-to-equity ratio will see a meaningful improvement, it added. According to the statement, the Company has also agreed to be the project manager of VM7 Project, post transfer to Public InvIT. The Gandeva Ena HAM Project is an eight-laning revenue-generating stretch in the State of Gujarat under NHAI's Package-VII of India's ambitious Bharatmala Pariyojana, which is being managed by VM7 Expressway Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, under a concession awarded by the National Highways
The government is constructing 25 greenfield expressways, totalling 10,000 km across the country, at a cost of Rs 6 lakh crore, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday. Addressing the 120th Annual Session of PHDCCI, Gadkari further said 75-80 per cent of the work on the strategic Zojila Tunnel, which will provide all-weather connectivity between the Ladakh region and the rest of the country, has been completed. He said the highways ministry will get Rs 15 lakh crore if it monetises its road projects. The road transport and highways minister also said that the construction of expressways and economic corridors has helped reduce the country's logistics costs by 10 per cent from 16 per cent earlier. "India's logistics cost will come down to 9 per cent by December, which will help India become more competitive," he said. Logistics costs are 12 per cent in the US, 12 per cent in European countries and 8 to 10 per cent in China. Talking about India's automobile sector, the minist
The Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway has generated 27.76 lakh e-challans worth Rs 470 crore for traffic violations since e-surveillance was put in place in July last year, with abysmal recovery of just Rs 51 crore in fines. According to data shared by the transport department, cars accounted for the lion's share of speed limit violations on the 95-km expressway, with more than 17.20 lakh e-challans. Heavy goods carriers were a distant second with 3.27 lakh e-challans, followed by heavy passenger vehicles, such as buses, at 2.48 lakh, taxis faced 2 lakh challans, and 1.2 lakh light goods carriers were booked during the period. Medium goods vehicles received 85,468 e-challans, articulated heavy goods vehicles 30,450, and medium passenger buses 14,764 e-challans, the data stated. A senior official of the Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Department (MMVD) told PTI that their department has issued 27.76 lakh e-challans inviting fines to the tune of Rs
The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday said it will use cutting-edge Swiss technology to improve ride quality on expressways in the state. Building on the "world-class ride comfort" already validated on the Gorakhpur Link Expressway through advanced testing by ETH Zurich, the state will now deploy the same AI-based systems on the Ganga, Bundelkhand, Agra-Lucknow, and Purvanchal expressways, it said in a statement. "In a pioneering move, the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) has initiated a comprehensive assessment and improvement drive for expressway riding comfort. This involves cutting-edge vibration and AI-based technologies developed by ETH Zurich and its independent spin-off company, RTDT Laboratory AG," the government said. "For this purpose, seven high-precision sensors -- four for assessing riding quality and three for monitoring motion -- were installed in an Innova vehicle. These include accelerometer-based and S-motion sensors, as well