India To Have US-Like Roads By 2024: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari

Mumbai: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said the government will construct 26 green express highways by 2024 and bring down travel time between key cities across India.

Gadkari said once the highway is completed, the travel time from Delhi to Dehradun, Haridwar and Jaipur will be reduced to two hours.

“Delhi to Chandigarh will take two-and-a-half hours, Delhi to Amritsar four hours, and you will be able to do Delhi-Mumbai in 12 hours. By 2024, I guarantee that roads in India will be like those in the United States,” Gadkari said.

He said that the Transport Ministry is also considering several new technologies to replace the toll plazas so that the jams at these places can be reduced.

Gadkari said the government is considering two new options for toll collection, Gadkari said the first is a satellite-based system, through which the GPS in the vehicle will help deduct toll directly from the vehicle owner’s bank account.

“The other option is the numberplate,” he said. “From 2019, we started the new numberplate with a new technology.… There will be a computerised system by which we can use the software, and we will collect toll.”

He said the system would register the point from where a vehicle enters the toll highway, and then register the point from where it exits; Toll will be deducted from the account of its owner for the number of kilometres the car will run on the highway.

He said the ministry is yet to zero in on the technology to be used but it will be selected “as early as possible — within a month”.

Specifying that FASTag — an electronic toll collection system — has contributed “immensely” to toll collection, Gadkari said 5.56 crore FASTags have been issued to date, and the average daily toll collection through FASTag is Rs 120 crore.

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