Conversion of highways into expressways
This article is authored by Yogendra Kumar, former ambassador, New Delhi.
A very large number of problems at the national level as also in the daily lives of citizens in the villages as well as the cities can be ascribed to the migration of rural populations into our metropolises, and the tier two and tier three urban centres. This phenomenon, thus, has a bearing on the quality of our governance and the pace of our economic growth.
The uneven socio-economic development of our rural areas is also manifesting itself in social regression in places, or worse in the form of Maoist violence. The urge for a better quality of life, accelerated socio-economic upward mobility, and enjoyment of fruits of technology is a universal phenomenon which drives migration of increasing number of people from the rural to the urban areas and from the less developed to the more developed parts of the country.
A somewhat calibrated approach towards developing our road network, the veritable arteries of the life and vibrancy to the national economy, would cater to this urge whilst helping with better governance of our urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. This approach would help in the reversal of the migration flows into the cities. It is a simpler, faster, and considerably inexpensive way to achieve our national objectives of a balanced, ecologically sustainable, and accelerated economic growth with significant favourable implications for India’s international stature. It would also help in addressing the highly complex challenges of climate change, atmospheric pollution, and, lately, national efforts towards fighting pandemics. The Prime Minister has given a high prominence to infrastructure in the government strategy for accelerated socio-economic growth for the country.
The cities having become the dynamos of India’s growth today, the migration of the population from the villages across the length and breadth over long distances defines the country’s social and economic life. The successful reversal of these migration flows can launch India on an accelerated growth path in addition to helping in better governance of the cities which are presently becoming ungovernable due to population pressure, inadequate infrastructure, pressure on adjoining fertile farmland for contiguous urban expansion and environmental degradation. Although the infrastructure in the cities, not just in the megalopolises like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, but even in medium-size towns, is getting better, it is always in a state of trying to catch up due to the other competing demand pressures on national resources. Whilst urban governance and the delivery of municipal services does not commensurately get better for their residents, the gap between the infrastructure quality in the cities and villages constantly keeps widening, thereby building up further the pressure for rural migration into the cities.
In the context of the national endeavour for realising the full potential of India’s international role, the country’s demographically lopsided and uneven economic growth becomes a major constraint. This phenomenon of uncontrolled urban migration is also reflective of poor agricultural growth and limited rural employment and skills’ development opportunities. Hosting nearly 63% of the population, an uneconomic and unsustainable agrarian sector--16% of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) requires massive financial subventions. In the United Kingdom, by way of illustration, 17% of the population (mostly elderly) is rural with agriculture sector constituting 0.61% of its GDP.
This lopsided economic growth is manifest in huge numbers of migrant labour in urban centres, sprawling urban slums, and concentrations of large numbers of unregulated urban colonies. The problem of their management is acquiring an unprecedented criticality. No less critical is the problem of urban pollution which, in combination of the looming threat of climate change, is affecting a very large proportion of Indian population, especially in north and central India; according to a study of trends in South Asia in a 20 year time frame, both the increased greenhouse gas concentrations and localised aerosol pollution have the capacity to alter patterns of precipitation where, even, slight deviations from the normal in the monsoon precipitation will have major repercussions for regional agriculture affecting hundreds of millions of people. Agricultural production, water availability, and hydroelectric power generation and grid stability will be substantially reduced by delayed monsoon and, conversely, increased precipitations would lead to excessive flooding and to widespread emigration.
The current policy of building high-profile expressways over long and short distances has generated its own kinds of problems. First of all, these projects require huge capital costs with considerable time-overruns and their return is often not realistically calculated for such capital expenditure. Then, there is also the fear in the rural population that their meagre landholdings will be taken away for construction of expressways connecting major cities and bringing little economic growth to the surrounding countryside. This is combined with pressure from the builders who create townships along these expressways and, thus, further putting pressure on the limited – adjoining – fertile agricultural land.
Moreover, these expressways are connected to major city transport arteries for discharging traffic in both directions, thereby contributing to traffic congestion in the cities; multiple elevated roads connecting these expressways with different choke points within the cities would alleviate the problem considerably. Within metropolitan cities with metro services, inner-city bus services should be discontinued due to their gross underutilisation even at peak time adding further to the traffic mayhem; instead, 15-20 seater, comfortable buses can be introduced on a radius of half distance between two metro stations to pick up and drop passengers to the nearby metro station.
The major conundrum, as far as the challenge of migration inflows into the cities is concerned, is for the government to so contrive that an average vehicle speed of 60-80 km per hour can be maintained on our inter-city roads by separating the slow-moving traffic from the faster moving.
It can be suggested, by way of a general approach to our road construction programme, that this can be done by converting into expressways the existing highways radiating out of the major cities. Today, most of these highways are, at least, double lanes in both directions. By adding a shoulder to these carriageways for emergency vehicle movement for police or ambulances or for breakdowns, enclosing it by sturdy railing, and by construction of exit-ways at suitable distances for this fast-moving vehicle traffic to get out of the expressway onto the country road or vice versa, these highways can be converted into expressways. These expressways would, basically, comprise one lane for slower traffic and another one for faster/overtaking vehicles.
At the same time, since expressways have a legally enforceable minimum speed limit below which vehicles cannot be driven, a complementary, connecting network of country roads for the slow-moving traffic is required. The expressways would be closed to slower traffic but the feeder road network in the vicinity would remain available for it. Closing the gaps in the existing country roads’ network is not very time-consuming or expensive either. This approach is not unique either as evident in a long-standing European Commission funding programme for its newer member countries for the construction of dual carriage expressways.
An extension of this approach entails the creation of such infrastructure where, for a variety of reasons, urban clusters are developing through the accelerating migration inflows from the surrounding countryside and peri-urban areas. Substituting the policy of highways for such clusters by development of a network of expressways with complementary country roads would lead to better economic integration of regional towns with the surrounding agrarian countryside. These integrated regional clusters are scalable to the national level through this process.
The outcomes would be the same as those seen in other countries, especially the developed ones, which have created a network of expressways and country roads. Yet, the accelerated and relatively inexpensive creation of such infrastructure would immediately improve the quality of governance in the cities and, due to easier and extensive access to the outlying areas, of the surrounding towns and villages.
This article is authored by Yogendra Kumar, former ambassador, New Delhi.
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