NHAI increases logistics & competitive efficiency of freight

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is developing those highways which are extremely relevant from the point of view of increasing the logistics and competitive efficiency of the freight, its chairman, Raghav Chandra said at an ASSOCHAM event held in Mumbai.

“We have got A.T. Kearney which has undertaken a massive study of examining movements across all our highways and they have mapped them in terms of the time that it takes for movement of commercial vehicles across these highways and a result of which we have selected specific

highways which need to be either augmented, or which need to be further improved,” said Chandra while addressing an ‘ASSOCHAM Infrastructure Summit – Building a new India.’

“Several choke points have been identified where traffic is held up for many hours and we are looking at improving not only those highways but also readdressing those choke points,” said Chandra.

“There is greater emphasis to focus more on quality than on cost, on a corridor approach Vs piecemeal road approach, economic and logistical efficiency improvements, choke points removals, interchanges and multi-modal redressals,” said the NHAI chief while highlighting how the organisation’s working is going to be different from what it had been earlier.

“For instance, between Delhi and Gurgaon, we have a massive Delhi-decongestion plan and as part of that we are building several flyovers, underpasses and interchanges just to reduce the kind of time it takes between Delhi and Gurgaon,” he added.He also said that he had personally met the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor and impressed upon him the need to declare the highway sector in particular as a
priority sector. Talking about the need for a very credible toll regime in India, he said, “Unfortunately a lot of people think that the tolls are taxes whereas tolls are the user charges and the entire public private partnership is predicated on the credibility of the toll regime.”

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