2012 India highway density map for its States and Union Territories in lane kilometers per 100000 people

Road A road is a linear way for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles (motorized and non-motorized) and pedestrians. Unlike streets, the main function of roads is transportation. There are many types of ...

s are an important mode of

transport in India Transport in India consists of transport by land, water and air. Road transport is the primary mode of transport for most Indian citizens, and India's road transport systems are among the most heavily used in the world. India's road network ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

has a network of over of roads This is the second-largest road network in the world, after the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

with .Annual Report 2021-22 (23.70 Mb ) At () of roads per square kilometre of land, the quantitative density of India's road network is equal to that of

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, and substantially higher than the United States (), China (), Brazil () and Russia (). Adjusted for its large population, India has approximately of roads per 1,000 people, which is much lower than United States but higher than that of China . India's road network carries over 71 percent of its freight and about 85 percent of passenger traffic. Since the 1990s, major efforts have been underway to modernize the country's road infrastructure. As of 31 March 2020, 70.00% of Indian roads were paved. As of March 2020, India had completed and placed into use over of four or more lane highways connecting many of its major manufacturing, commercial and cultural centres. According to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, as of March 2021, India had about of national highways and expressways, plus another of state highways. Major projects are being implemented under the

Bharatmala The Bharatmala Pariyojna ( 'India garland project') is an ecosystem of road development which includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam f ...

, a government initiative. Private builders and highway operators are also implementing major projects.

Organization

The Indian road network is administered by various government authorities, given India's federal form of government. The following table shows the total length of India's road network by type of road and administering authority

History

The first evidence of road development in the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

can be traced back to approximately around 2800 BC in the ancient cities of

Harrapa Harappa (; Urdu/ pnb, ) is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal. The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a mode ...

and

Mohenjodaro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';Indus Valley civilization. Ruling emperors and monarchs of ancient and medieval India continued to construct roads to connect the cities. The existing

Grand Trunk Road The Grand Trunk Road (formerly known as Uttarapath, Sarak-e-Azam, Shah Rah-e-Azam, Badshahi Sarak, and Long Walk) is one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For at least 2,500 years it has linked Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. ...

was re-built by the Mauryan Empire, and further rebuilt by subsequent entities such as the

Sur Empire The Sur Empire ( ps, د سرو امپراتورۍ, dë sru amparāturəi; fa, امپراطوری سور, emperâturi sur) was an Afghan dynasty which ruled a large territory in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent for nearly 16 year ...

, the

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

and the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

. In the 1830s, the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

started a programme of

metalled road A road surface (British English), or pavement (American English), is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, hoggin, cobble ...

construction ( gravel road), for both commercial and administrative purposes. The Grand Trunk Road – from Calcutta, through Delhi to Peshawar – was rebuilt at a cost of £1,000 per mile; roads from

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

, Bombay to

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra i ...

and Bombay to Madras were constructed; and a Public Works Department and the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee were founded, to train and employ local surveyors, engineers and overseers, to perform the work, and to maintain the roads. This programme resulted in an estimated of metalled roads being constructed by the 1850s. In December 1934, the Indian Road Congress (IRC) was formed, on the recommendations of the Indian Road Development Committee ( Jayakar Committee) of the Government of India. In 1943, they proposed a twenty-year plan to increase the road network from to by 1963, to achieve a road density of 16 km per 100 km² of land. The construction was to be paid in part through the duty imposed, since 1939, on petrol sales. This became known as the Nagpur Plan. The construction target was achieved in the late 1950s. In 1956, a Highways Act was passed, and a second twenty-year plan proposed for the period 1961–1981, with the ambition of doubling road density to 32 km per 100 km². This second plan became known as the Bombay Road Plan. In 1988, an autonomous entity called the

National Highways Authority of India The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI (Hindi: भारतीय राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग प्राधिकरण) is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, set up in 1995 (Act 1988) and i ...

(NHAI) was established by an Act of Parliament and came into existence on 15 June 1989. The Act empowered NHAI to develop, maintain and manage India's road network through National Highways. However, little happened until India introduced widespread economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Since 1995, NHAI has increasingly privatized road network development in India. Golden Quadrilateral

In 1998,

National Highways Development Project The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) is a project to upgrade, rehabilitate and widen major highways in India to a higher standard. The project was started in 1998 under the leadership of Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Natio ...

(NHDP) was started by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The flagship project of the NHDP is the

Golden Quadrilateral The Golden Quadrilateral ( hi, स्वर्णिम चतुर्भुज, Svarnim Chaturbhuj; abbreviated GQ) is a national highway network connecting several major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. It forms a ...

, a total of of four-to-six-lane highways connecting the four major cities of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

and

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. The total cost of the project is , funded largely by the government's special petroleum product tax revenues and government borrowing. In January 2012, India announced that the four-lane GQ highway network was complete. North-South East-West Corridors

Another important road project of the NHDP is the four-to-six-lane

North–South and East–West Corridor The North–South–East–West Corridor (NS-EW) is the largest ongoing highway project in India. It is the second phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of building 7300 kilometers of four/six lane highways a ...

, comprising national highways connecting four extreme points of the country. The project aims to connect Srinagar in the north to

Kanyakumari Kanniyakumari (; , referring to Devi Kanya Kumari), also known as Cape Comorin, is a city in Kanniyakumari district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It is the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent and the southernmost city in mainland Ind ...

in the south (including a spur from Salem to Kanyakumari, via Coimbatore and

Kochi Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...

), and

Silchar Silchar is a city and the headquarters of the Cachar district of the state of Assam, India. It is located south east of Guwahati. It was founded by Captain Thomas Fisher in 1832 when he shifted the headquarters of Cachar to Janiganj in Silchar. ...

in the east to Porbandar in the west. As of 31 October 2016, 90.99% of the project had been completed, 5.47% of the project work is under implementation and 3.52% of the total length is remaining. As of May 2017, under NHDP, about of four-to-six-lane highways have been constructed (including the GQ and N–S/E–W Corridor), while a total of of road has been planned to have four-to-six lanes under the NHDP. The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is a Public Sector Enterprise(PSE) created by

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is a ministry of the Government of India, that is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules, regulations and laws relating to road transport, transport research and in als ...

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

in the year 2014 to build highways in technical challenging and high altitude regions of Northeastern states, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It has the task to implement the Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North Eastern Region (SARDP-NE) in National Highways portion. The SARDP-NE is under implementation in Phases. * Phase-A: Approved in 2005, it included about 4,099 km length of roads (3,014 km of NH and 1,085 km of State roads). The SARDP-NE Phase ‘A’ is expected to be completed by 2023–24. * Phase-B: It covers 3,723 km (2,210 km NHs and 1,513 km of State roads) of road. Phase ‘B’ of SARDP-NE shall be taken up after completion of Phase ‘A’.

is a centrally-sponsored and funded road and highways project of the

, started in 2017, with a target of constructing of new highways at an estimated cost of . Bharatmala Phase I plans to construct of highways (including the remaining projects that were under NHDP) by 2021–22, at an estimated cost of . In 2021, Asia's longest high speed track, National Automotive Test Track was inaugurated in

Indore Indore () is the largest and most populous city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of both Indore District and Indore Division. It is also considered as an education hub of the state and is the only city to ...

, which would be used to measure the maximum speed capabilities of high-end cars and other categories of vehicles. India's rate of road building has accelerated since 2010s. It averaged about per day in and per day in 2018–19. The country's target is to build of highways per day. On July 21, 2021, Minister of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH)

Nitin Gadkari Nitin Jairam Gadkari (; born 27 May 1957) is an Indian politician from Maharashtra who is the current Minister for Road Transport & Highways in the Government of India. He is also the longest serving Minister for Road Transport & Highways cu ...

said that India has created a world record of constructing of four-lane concrete road in 24 hours and of single lane bitumen road in just 21 hours as per the highest IRC norms and specifications of the MoRTH to ensure quality control. Also, an average of of highways have been constructed every day during 2020–21.

Types of roads

Expressways

Delhi Noida Direct flyway (Uttar Pradesh - 2011-06-18)

Expressways are high-speed roads that are four- or more lanes, and are access controlled where entrance and exit is controlled by the use of

ramps An inclined plane, also known as a ramp, is a flat supporting surface tilted at an angle from the vertical direction, with one end higher than the other, used as an aid for raising or lowering a load. The inclined plane is one of the six clas ...

that are incorporated into the design of the expressway. Most of the existing expressways in India are toll roads. Expressways make up approximately of India's road network, as of 2020. The government has drawn up a target to build a network of new expressways by 2022. National Expressways Authority of India (NEAI) operating under the

will be in-charge of the construction and maintenance of expressways. The

NHAI The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI (Hindi: भारतीय राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग प्राधिकरण) is an autonomous agency of the Government of India, set up in 1995 (Act 1988) and i ...

aims to expand the expressway network and plans to add an additional of expressways by 2022 apart from existing national highways. India's first 8-lane wide access-controlled expressway, the Delhi Noida Direct Flyway (DND Flyway), operational in January 2001, is an expressway connecting

and

Noida Noida, short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, is a planned city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Noida is a satellite city of Delhi and is a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) o ...

in the states of Delhi and

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

. The Mumbai Pune Expressway, connecting

and

in Maharashtra fully operational in 2002, is India's first 6-lane wide access-controlled tolled expressway. The

Yamuna Expressway Yamuna Expressway is a 6- lane wide (expandable to 8) and 165.5 km long access-controlled expressway in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is presently India's 3rd longest expressway since February 2017. It was built to de-congest the old ...

is a six-lane controlled-access expressway opened on 9 August 2012. On 21 November 2016, the six-lane Agra Lucknow Expressway was opened. Under construction as of 2019, the

Mumbai–Nagpur Expressway The Samruddhi Mahamarg or ''Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway'' (officially known as Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg) is a partially opened 6-lane wide (expandable to 8), 701-km long access-co ...

is expected to become the largest expressway in the country. Several expressway projects, such as the Chennai-Bangalore Expressway, Chennai-Salem Expressway, Delhi-Jaipur Expressway, Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway are planned/under-construction. Ganga Expressway is approved and expected to be under-construction by end of 2021.

National highways

National Highway 16 (old NH 5) at Visakhapatnam

National highways are highways connecting major cities throughout the country with premium quality and are at-grade roads. National Highways are designated with NH, followed by the highway number. Indian national highways are further classified based on the width of the carriageway of the highway. India has around of National Highways as of April 2021 and is expected to reach 200,000km By 2024 consisting of Top Notch Highways And Expressways. National Highways constituted 2.7% of India's total road network, but carried about 40% of road traffic, as of 2013. In 2016, the government vowed to double the highway length from 96,000 to 2,00,000 km. The

(NHAI) and the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) are the authorities responsible for the development, maintenance and management of the National Highways in India. The NHAI has been undertaking developmental activities under the

(NHDP) in five phases. From 2018, the pending projects under NHDP are expected to be subsumed under

. The NHAI is also responsible for implementing other projects on National Highways, primarily road

connectivity Connectivity may refer to: Computing and technology * Connectivity (media), the ability of the social media to accumulate economic capital from the users connections and activities * Internet connectivity, the means by which individual terminal ...

to major ports in India. The

and

were major ongoing highway development projects in India.

State highways

State highways are highways connecting major cities throughout a state and are also at-grade roads. They also connect with National Highways or state highways of neighboring states. State Highways are designated with SH, followed by the highway number and preceded by state code. As of 31 March 2020, the total length of state highways was . As of 31 March 2020, Maharashtra has the largest share of state highways among all states (22.14%), followed by

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

(11.11%),

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

(9.76%),

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...

(8.62%) and

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

(6.67%). State governments have the authority and responsibility to build state highways. Most of the state highways are developed by state public works departments. Independently of the

program, state governments have been implementing a number of state highway projects since 2000. By 2010, state highway projects worth US$1.7 billion had been completed, and projects worth an additional US$11.4 billion were under implementation.

District roads

District Roads in India are approximately , of which 14.80% of the total length was surfaced. Zila Parishads also have the authority and responsibility to build district roads.

Rural roads

Rural roads form a substantial portion of the country's road network, forming 72.97% of the total of roads, as of March 2020. As of the same date, the percentage of unsurfaced roads to the total road length was 31%. For the development of these rural roads,

Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) () is a nationwide plan in India to provide good all-weather road connectivity to unconnected villages. Of 178,000 (1.7 lakh) habitations with a population of above 500 in the plains and above 250 i ...

(Prime Minister's Rural Roads Scheme) was launched in December 2000 by the Indian government to provide connectivity to isolated rural habitations. The scheme envisions that these roads will be constructed and maintained by the village panchayats. In some parts of India, the government has attempted to manage the programme directly as a local social spending program. In other parts of India, the and a sister program named (Build India) have privatized the rural road construction projects and deployed contractors. The effort has aimed to build all-season single-lane asphalted roads to connect India's rural and remote areas. A significant portion of funding for these projects has come from the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

and the

Asian Development Bank The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in the Ortigas Center located in the city of Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field offic ...

Border roads

Border Roads are the roads constructed along the northern and northeastern borders of our country. These roads are constructed and maintained by Border Roads Organisation (BRO) which was set up in 1960 by the government of India. BRO is regarded as a symbol of nation building, national integration and an inseparable component in maintaining the security of the country.

Issues

Congestion

India's intra-city vehicle speed is among the lowest in the world. As per a study by

Ola Cabs Ola Cabs (stylized as OLΛ) is an Indian multinational ridesharing company, headquartered in Bangalore. It also operates in other business verticals including financial services and cloud kitchens. A variety of venture capitalists including ...

, in 2017, the average traffic speed in

was . Amongst other major cities, the average traffic speed in

was , in

was , in Hyderabad was , and in Bengaluru was .

Fatalities

The

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of ...

's compilation of road network safety data for major economies found India to have the highest number of road fatalities in the world, with 299,091 deaths caused by road accidents in 2016. Also, fatalities per 100,000 population stay among the highest, at 22.6. Of total fatalities, 40% were of riders of 2 or 3 wheelers, 18% were of drivers and passengers of 4-wheeled cars and light vehicles, 18% were of drivers and passengers of buses and heavy trucks, 10% of pedestrians, 2% of cyclists and 13% of other.

References

External links

Classification of roads in India

Impact of roads on the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) in India
{{Social issues in India Roads in India, Road transport in India