[iamitp]

Dear BHPians,

This is a follow-up from the thread on 'Which State has the best Highways in India?' which saw almost 500 responses and clearly established Tamil Nadu (almost 50% of the votes!) as the State with India's best highways. Gujarat and Rajasthan made up the 2nd and 3rd spot with about 12% each.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/stree...ays-india.html (Which State has the best Highways in India?))

Now, time to highlight the State with the worst highways in the country. As before, the objective of this thread is to quantify your personal experiences and read what the numbers have to say.

Just to make things clear, let's vote on the 'driveability' of the roads, i.e. safety, consistency, layout, signs & markings, lighting, amenities etc. and not how scenic the views are.

We can have a separate poll on the State with the most scenic roads, maybe.

Please do vote based on your personal driving experience on the State and National Highways passing through the States.

Preferably vote only for those States where you have personally driven more than 500 KMs.

Kindly refrain from basing your vote based on city/town/village roads as that deserves a separate poll.

Let us keep UTs apart from this poll due to their small Highway network length and be cognizant of the terrain challenges faced by hilly and North-eastern States.

[Tgo]

Voted Haryana.

The KMP, Eastern Peripheral section in Haryana are some of worst examples of roadwork. Sagging roads near culverts give you drops of almost 4-6 inches at interface of the tarmac and the concrete. With speeds you are supposed to be doing, bent rims are the least of your concerns, think more on the lines of totalling your cars.

Highways connecting Rohtak, Hissar, Gurgaon, and Bahadurgarh (may have missed a few more) have very sharp turns, and vague signage. Add to that the muscle men at tool plazas, both, in the cars and the booth settling arguments. Also parts of these highways were prone to flooding till a few years ago.

[chaksjr]

With what I have observed from seeing travel videos online, Maharashtra will probably be a top contender. Patchwork upon patchwork on state highways connecting decently sized cities.

Again, not experienced first hand, but an observation from just seeing videos. I am open to correction.

[normaltusker]

I chose Maharashtra. Majority of my driving is between Karnataka and Maharashtra where the driving time is generally early in the morning. What I have noticed is that the highways in Karnataka are beautiful, well managed 6 lane roads with sensible traffic while those in Maha are mostly 4 lane with one lane being blocked by Sugarcane tractors. Where there are no Sugarcane tractors, both lanes would be blocked by 2 wheelers!

Even where the tarmac is concerned, most part is generally for want of repair and the cruising speed needs to drastically come down to 50-60 kmph!

[SILVER-ARROW]

Originally Posted by chaksjr

With what I have observed from seeing travel videos online, Maharashtra will probably be a top contender. Patchwork upon patchwork on state highways connecting decently sized cities.

Again, not experienced first hand, but an observation from just seeing videos. I am open to correction.

Your Observation is Spot on! No second thoughts about it.

Having driven in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Can safely vouch that highways in Maharashtra are not even close to being called state highways. Barring few exceptions the road conditions are horrible.
Driving a stretch between Kolhapur and Nipani is enough to lay rest to the doubts about the condition of highways between Maharashtra and Karnataka. Not only the highways, general driving sense, lane discipline too is better followed in Karnataka and Gujarat.

Of course my observations are based on the few states that I have driven, Other forum members can also pitch in with their opinion.

Thanks

[chinkara]

Voted Kerala. Surfaces are ok, traffic discipline is not.

Honourable mention to WB, again not just because of surface (but the highways to Basanti / Gosaba are pretty bad) but discipline and most importantly moronic management by WBP who create bottlenecks every 2-3 km for some random reason.

Interesting to see so many votes for MH. I had a job 15 years back which required a lot of travel across the state and I always found the highways to be ok.

[silverado]

Its a difficult poll and may not reflect the actual state of highways. It is the time of poll which also matters and i feel not many of us have hit highways in last 2 years due to covid restrictions.

I have rated MH since thats where i belong to and have done most of my running apart from GJ, KA and AP on few occasions.

[Jhinchak]

This is going to be super difficult to judge because we may have bad road here but there might be something worse in a different state.
Also something which should be taken into consideration is the time taken to repair those roads, for example the Bangalore to Chennai highway ( after Vellore) is being repaired\upgraded but seems like its taking for ever. I think its almost 2 years and with the end not near.

I have voted for Maharashtra only because its the worse among the 3-4 states i have travelled on.

[Kottayamkaran]

Hands down Kerala has the worst highways in all of India. Driving in Kerala highways is like driving inside the town. One can hardly drive in the highest gear and requires constant gear changes. Also, the toll amount for the roads keeps going higher. It was Rs.55 for one side a few years back and at present, it is Rs.75 for one side toll at Paliyekara. Also, construction activities take longer time than other states due to labor problems and problems in land acquisition. The width of NH-17 at some places in Kochi is lower than some of the village roads.

[amol4184]

Originally Posted by Kottayamkaran

Hands down Kerala has the worst highways in all of India. Driving in Kerala highways is like driving inside the town. One can hardly drive in the highest gear and requires constant gear changes. Also, the toll amount for the roads keeps going higher. It was Rs.55 for one side a few years back and at present, it is Rs.75 for one side toll at Paliyekara. Also, construction activities take longer time than other states due to labor problems and problems in land acquisition. The width of NH-17 at some places in Kochi is lower than some of the village roads.

I was in Kerala for 10 days in December and travelled a lot. While the road surfaces itself are not too bad, the traffic, road manners are insane. I am from MH which has garnered more votes than Kerala but I guess that is for poor roads and understandably so.

Before venturing out my FIL had warned me about the state buses and rightly so. I saw single most outrageous and near suicidal driving ever by KSRTC bus on our way back home from Munnar (extremely narrow highway) that made me go holyyyyyy s**t. On at least 3 occasions the bus driver would have collided head on with incoming traffic before coming to complete halt and merging back into left lane. The overtaking was impossible and he still tried it...thrice.

When all attempts failed he started driving within kissing distance of car ahead to scare them off the road. He did finally pressurize 2 cars onto narrow sloped shoulder before overtaking.

Have driven extensively in MH, AP and KA which all have narrow roads to some extent but this one instance in Kerala tops any bad experience on the road. I am sure narrow highways combined with high number of vehicles aggravates drivers who are already high strung from stress and tiredness.

[Bibendum90949]

Originally Posted by iamitp

Just to make things clear, let's vote on the 'driveability' of the roads, i.e. safety, consistency, layout, signs & markings, lighting, amenities etc. and not how scenic the views are.

i've driven across almost all states of India barring the NE. I can safely say Kerala has the worst highways of them all. Here I'm not talking about the surface quality of roads. The state of Kerala in fact is a big city with no real outskirts as such. You are just moving from one pocket of city to another. On Kerala roads, there's equality all the time. Whether you drive a M sport or a Nano, you'll just cover the same distance in an hour - 30-35 kms at best during daytime.

I'm reproducing one of my old posts from another thread. No prizes for guessing what did I vote for.

Originally Posted by Bibendum90949

Having driven a good part of my life on Kerala roads, I can safely say the primary issue Kerala faces is the lack of wide roads. The NH itself for most part in the state is still a single carriage way and it had the same width when I used to bicycle on them as a school boy. Needless to say the vehicle density has grown manifolds over the years. A day journey from state capital Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi which is just a shade above 200 kms would take anywhere between 6-7 hours and that translates to 27 kms per hour. This is roughly the same distance one would cover driving in the hills of a treacherous stretch in Himachal or J&K. And if one were to drive this distance on a 6 lane highway, it could only take 2.5 hours. I'm sure each of us will have a stretch to name from their respective state or a route they frequent which has same plight. That would be worthy of another thread. Just imagine the amount of man hours and fuel wasted on our ill-fated roads.

[Crow]

I voted for Maharashtra because I’ve driven extensively across the state. However, this poll is unlikely to give an accurate result, for reasons others have already described.

The single best way to judge MH highways is to drive out of state in any direction. The roads will always improve the moment you exit the MH border. MP, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Goa have better roads than Maharashtra. The only border I haven’t travelled to yet is Chhattisgarh.

Just today I drove on NH-65 from Pune to Hyderabad. This is one of the rare instances of a great highway in Maharashtra. Everyone should drive on this road once if they’re tired of the other MH highways.

The road surface is almost never smooth in Maharashtra. Patchwork is so bad that you’re probably better off using an off-road suspension setup. If there was an award for alloy-breaking potholes on highways, Pune-Satara would win it post-monsoon every year. We also have the amazing Mumbai-Nasik-Dhule “highway” with speedbreakers every 5-10km and bad or worse road surface quality.

Don’t even get me started about the quality of roads inside the capital city. Mumbai’s roads are horrible right now, and god only knows what horrors the upcoming monsoon will unleash.

However, the stories I keep reading about Kerala roads make me believe that they’re far more dangerous than MH highways. I haven’t driven there so I didn’t vote for Kerala.

[Shreyans_Jain]

Haryana has some horrible highways.

KMP -EPE is a classic example of how not to build an expressway. It is extremely uneven and bumpy and is a rare road where driving at the prescribed limits is dangerous, even in high end machinery.

NH2 Delhi to Ambala has been a royal mess since forever. I’ve been travelling on this road for over 30 years and it has ALWAYS been under construction. A most congested and painfully tiring drive, and you pay exorbitant tolls as well.

Other roads in the state: towards Hisar, Sirsa, Palwal, Sohna and Nuh are all in states of disrepair. And they are all tolled. Closer home, the roads here inside Faridabad are all in pathetic shape. Car breaking shape.

The overall state of road infrastructure in Haryana has sharply deteriorated over the past 5-7 years and is both woefully inadequate and badly maintained. Urgent course correction is needed.

[Gannu_1]

Originally Posted by Kottayamkaran

Hands down Kerala has the worst highways in all of India.

Expect us mallus to vote in unison! No two thoughts about this. Our state has unarguably the worst roads in the country with no scope for improvement in the immediate future. As a poster above rightly said, 30-35 kmph is the best average you could eke out even on the 4/6 laned roads thanks to the combination of the traffic, speed cams and the absence of flyovers at junctions.

I had it when we drove from Palakkad to Trivandrum via Alleppey after picking up a friend from Cochin to attend a friend’s wedding. God, I just remembering crashing that night! Vowed to never drive to Trivandrum again.

[binand]

Voted Kerala - my home state. Is there any other state where a distance of about 180 km (my parents' house to my in-laws' house) takes nearly 6 hours?