An outlook on Problems in Indian Road Transportation 2020
A good Road transportation network should provide proper connection of essential public and private places for the function and enhancement of the society. This article highlights the major problems that exist in the Indian road transportation system with current statistics.
Status of Indian Road Transportation
India houses 18 percent of the world’s population and ranks 5th in terms of Nominal GDP. But, to say in plain terms, the state of India’s infrastructure is ugly, not ugly good, but ugly in a bad way.
India ranks second in terms of road length (5,603,293km) which caters to 85 percent of passenger traffic and 60 percent of freight transport. National highways stood at 1,42,126km(as of 2019) of total road length, but only 5 percent of the national highways are four-lane roads(7,000 km) and only 1 percent of roads are express highways(1,583). Moreover, a large number of the population lacks access to all-weather roads.
In metro and urban areas like Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, roads are highly congested, and not properly maintained. In suburban and rural areas, roads are poorly constructed with full of potholes and cracks. According to WHO and MORTH, India ranks first in road fatalities with 2,99,091 road-related death and 1,51,417 accident-related death in 2018 alone.
India’s average road speed is half the world’s average, and the freight cost in India is double the freight cost of developed countries. KPMG, an independent business advisory reports that problems in Indian road transportation hinders India’s GDP Growth by one to two percent and result in the loss of 1 crore jobs every year.
Road Transportation development
The Indian government has vowed to double the existing National Highways through projects like Bharatmala. They are planning to add an additional 35,000 km NH road and 18,000 km of express highway road by the year 2022. But, many projects are delayed and could not be executed because of bureaucracy, regional political situation, fund deficiency, and land acquisitions problems.
World Bank estimated that India needs 500 billion dollars of investment in the next 10 years, for the development of road transportation alone.
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