Govt mulling $2-3 bn proj for safety features at highways

Government is considering a USD 2-3 billion project for installing safety features like construction of underpasses and pedestrian crossings at national highways, a top official said today.

"A proposal worth USD 2-3 billion has been sent to the Highways Ministry and is getting approval," National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) Chairman Raghav Chandra said at an event on road safety here.

He said the country accounts for a high number of road accidents every year in which around 1.5 lakh people lose lives. Many of these accidents occur due to lack of safety features on highways, he added.

"We do not have right engineering features on our National Highways ... We are committed to correct the wrong designing by correcting it and constructing overbridges, underpasses, pedestrian passes etc," he said.

Road safety is high on the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari and accordingly NHAI is committed to retrofitting National Highways with safety features, he added.

Also, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been instructed to construct footbridges of up to Rs 1 crore on highways wherever required.

The Chairman also said that to ensure non-stop vehicle movement at toll plazas, NHAI is commencing from tomorrow a cashless payment mechanism, FASTag, at 280 of 350 toll plazas across the country.

FASTag offers near non-stop movement of vehicles through toll plazas and convenience of cashless payments of toll fee with nationwide inter-operable electronic toll collection services.

It employs RFID technology for making toll payments directly from the pre-paid account linked to it. A vehicle using FASTag will use dedicated FASTag lane to have cashless travel.