Reportedly minister of Road Transport and Highways of india, nitin gadkari recently dominated the headlines at a rally in Bhim Nagar’s ram Leela ground. Gadkari was addressing a crowd of 2,000-2,500 people ahead of the haryana assembly polls to be conducted on october 5. He said, “Haryana’s national highways infrastructure will be better than the US (United States of America) by the end of 2024… Work in this 10 years was just a trailer, asli film shuru hona baaki hai.” Before this rally, Gadkari has made similar claims about making India’s infrastructure similar to or even better than the US. Is implementing this claim on the ground practically possible? The explainer written below tries to find an answer to this question.
Perhaps to get the answer to this question, we primarily looked at data from many sources including reports from Nitin Gadkari’s ministry and the US department of transportation (Federal Highway Administration – FHWA). The reports from the National Highways Authority of india (NHAI) and the highway infrastructure of india and America were also looked upon. In these reports, we tried to understand the challenges of both the US and India’s highway systems.
Moreover National Highways in india (1.43 lakh kilometres) constitute only 2.3 per cent of the total road network. However, they bear 40 per cent of the traffic load. Interstate highways in the US constitute about 1.2 per cent of the total road network but carry about a quarter of vehicle journeys.
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