Are highways in India improving or deteriorating

I travel frequently on the National Highway 44 and my trip which used to take 7 hours, now takes 9-10 hours that too after paying Rs 900 as toll charges.

BHPian poloman recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

We all are bombarded with news of focus on infrastructure and highway expansion in India. The Ministry of Roadways is supposedly one of the best-performing ministries in India.

But when you travel on highways are you seeing a different picture? I am a regular on NH44 from Bangalore to Thrissur. I am paying around 900Rs toll around 2Rs per Km. But what a mess this road has turned in to.

There are around 25 diversions on this stretch of road. Flyovers at nowhere with construction going on for years, Road works happening with even stretches of 5 km closed, pathetic surface quality, one can go on and on. Add to that unscientific zig-zag barriers placed by TN police. This trip which used to take 7 hours, is taking 9-10 hours now. That too paying 900 Rs toll. Mind you this road was diversion-free for only some time and suddenly all these constructions started out of nowhere.

I am sure most of the existing highways are in the same shape. Cut-throat tolls with multiple diversions and poor quality of surface. On top of that tolls are being increased 5-10% per year.

How is this tolerable? When you pay steep tolls, at least expect a smooth stress-free free trip.

I am sure most of the older highways are in the same shape, high tolls, poor maintenance and ever-going constructions.

Here's what BHPian Rodie09 had to say about the matter:

Thanks for bringing up a very relevant topic that needs discussion. If I can sum up my opinion in a few points, this is how the govt seems to be playing:

• Quantity (length and connectivity) - Improving rapidly
• Quality - Looks like there is no measure or standard here - no QA. It's luck what comes out. Good to go as long as it is motorable.
• Toll - No relation to the above two when you take bad patches and diversions into account.

Here's what BHPian GForceEnjoyer had to say about the matter:

As someone who travels a ton on highways, I think Indian highways (and expressways) are deteriorating on the whole. In most cases, this is due to awful surface quality, especially expansion joints. Roads made with loud, rough asphalt, or louder, rougher concrete, both of poor quality are becoming way too common.

Just two days prior to writing this, we traveled on the new elevated section of NH-44 over Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh and the abrupt switches from concrete to asphalt, expansion joints that were more like mountains and tons of massive rumble strips that unsettled the car on each curve, almost causing us to lose grip the first time, made for a very unpleasant and fatiguing drive. (The tolls on the whole trip from Hyderabad to Jabalpur were 1800+ rupees for approximately 780 kilometres, 2.3 rupees per kilometre!)

This was Madhya Pradesh; Maharashtra is worse! Random diversions and absolutely ludicrous toll rates for atrocious road quality. I've travelled across the entire state, east to west and north to south, and can confidently say that Maharashtra might have the worst roads of any Indian state. The Hyderabad-Pune stretch was decent overall in 2021 with surfaces being of acceptable quality apart from the many diversions. The same route in 2024 is now full of terrible patchwork and tyre grooves so deep that you genuinely think you'll scrape your underbody somewhere. Meanwhile, the fancy new Samruddhi Mahamarg has a surface that can't support its own posted speed limit of 120 km/h, while Hyderabad's outer ring road inaugurated over a decade ago can handle that with ease!

With Telangana, the quality of asphalt and its surfacing remains top-notch, but over the past few years, such massive rumble strips have been installed in such massive quantities that you really have to slow down to a crawl over them, defeating the entire point of a highway. Curves which were not dangerous have now been made so because of them, and those that already were have been made even worse! Not to mention brief epidemics of random barricades placed anywhere where one can settle into a relaxing cruise at highway speeds.

The surface quality of some highways in Andhra Pradesh has also been deteriorating, with lots of undulations making it difficult to achieve and sustain highway speeds.

These are my observations from the states whose roads I travel on enough to form an informed opinion about. The overall condition of highways definitely seems to be in decline, while tolls are being raised astronomically.

Here's what BHPian sinharishi had to say about the matter:

Thank you for bringing this up.

I drive from NCR to Mumbai and back at least 4 to 5 times a year. My views are mixed on the topic. The new expressways are just a scam, I will be blunt about it, the expressways have far inferior surface vs NHs! One can clearly see there is a rush to finish the project with no importance given to quality. The picture is all rosy for those who hardly travel and just feel good that the country is developing with so many expressways coming up.

For me, the best expressway is still the ALE (Agra-LKO). The DME (Delhi-Mumbai) expressway just cannot match the standards. The ALE is FLAT! Heck from Noida to LKO one can reach in 5 hours, a distance of 565 kms! YEW, given its age, is still good. EPE, WPE, DME (Delhi-Meerut) - the less said the better.

DME might not be as bad as EPE/E/WPE but it's not flat at all. The new Mumbai expressway section (NE1-Baruch) is by far the worst stretch of expressway I have driven on. On our recent trip to Coorg, we joined NH48 near Tumkur and boy-o-boy what a fantastic highway that is till you enter MH. Can give these expressways a run for their money!

The NHs, improved and how! Love it. For example, the entire 4-lane highway between Ahmedabad and Udaipur is now 6-lane. A quick turnaround time too. The Delhi-Chandigarh or Delhi-Gajraula, are now 6/8-lane. However, I do not understand why there is a sudden need for flyovers on these NHs. The Deoband-Doon highway, was super until they decided to add a few flyovers. Same for the Jaipur-Ajmer highway. There were no bottlenecks that warranted a flyover. I am sure there must be enough reasons but the time taken for the work to be completed is painfully long.

Overall I am quite satisfied with the NHs, but the expressways, meh. Every time I drive my sedan on an expressway, I realise I should have bought an SUV!

Here's what BHPian TorquePull had to say about the matter:

Indian highways are deteriorating, especially in TN where the local police keep barricades on every single gap in the median and create chaos. They even close the extra lane provided for turning right. They work with the logic that by hindering the smooth flow of vehicles, they'll slow down and avoid accidents.

The barricade placements are also not uniform, sometimes you have to use the right lane and sometimes the left. During low visibility, it will be hard to find which side is the barricade placed first.

The design of the highways itself is flawed. They place speed breakers at the end of the service road, causing extremely slow vehicles to dangerously merge with fast-moving traffic. They should instead provide an extra lane to increase speed and then merge.

All the bypass for towns, start and end on a curve. Vehicles entering or exiting the highway to enter towns do so on a curve. It should have been designed to be placed on straight roads.

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