Govt reduces vehicle threshold to widen NHs to 4, 6 & 8 lanes: Nitish Gadkari | India News

Nitin Gadkari (ANI photo)

NEW DELHI: Government will undertake the expansion of 25,000 km of two-lane highways to four lanes, involving an investment of Rs 10 lakh crore over the next two years, said road transport minister Nitin Gadkari in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. He also announced the decision to reduce the traffic threshold of NH stretches to qualify for expansion to four, six and eight lanes.
Replying to a question on multi-laning of NHs, Gadkari said two-lane stretches carrying more than 12,000 passenger car units (PCUs) per day will qualify to be expanded to four-lane roads, which was earlier 12,500 PCUs. Four-lane highways that breach the 20,000 PCUs per day limit will qualify for six-laning and those with more than 30,000 will be widened to eight lanes.
PCUs is a metric used to measure the impact of different vehicles on traffic flow, converting heterogeneous traffic into a standardised, homogeneous stream for analysis and planning. While a standard passenger car is typically assigned a PCU value of 1, a heavy truck might have a PCU value of 2-4.
Sources the official decision on the revised eligibility criteria for NH expansion will be out soon for planning of the next phase of highway development.
Gadkari said govt has prepared the detailed project reports (DPRs) of 3,500 km two-lane highways for expansion to four lanes and preparation of DPRs for another 21,500 will start soon.
This gains importance considering govt’s increased thrust on building wider highways that can meet the projected traffic demand. In the past 11 years, the length of 4-lane highways has been increased by 163%, from 18,000 km to 48,000 km.
The minister said currently 636 NH projects of four/six and eight laning covering 16,422 km costing over Rs 6 lakh crore are under way, out of which 8,852 km length is completed. All these will be completed in a phased manner by financial year 2028-29.