Better late than never

Lane-counting to measure road length should have been done earlier

There was much to cheer during the media interaction of Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday. The minister announced that in 2017-18, fresh construction of national highways increased 20 per cent over the preceding year. For a country struggling to create new employment opportunities, this is good news. Mr Gadkari also announced that some key projects were running well ahead of schedule. For instance, construction work for the Rs 44-billion Eastern Peripheral Expressway is likely to be completed in just 500 days, as against the targeted 910 days. This is expected to reduce pollution and decongest the national capital by preventing commercial vehicles not bound for Delhi from entering the city. Similarly, the construction of a 14-lane highway from Delhi to Dasna is expected to be completed in just 15 months as against the initial target of 30 months.

These are impressive achievements. Also welcome is the government’s decision to replace the linear length method with lane-km to calculate the length of the highways built. It is obvious that India should have been doing lane-counting from day one as it is wrong to equate a two-lane road with a six-lane highway, in terms of cost, work involved and transport significance. According to the government’s own estimates, building a two-lane highway with paved shoulder costs Rs 60-80 million per km. This goes up to Rs 140-200 million for a four-lane highway. The new method will better reflect this difference in cost and effort. It is the logical thing to do and India should have switched to this system, followed in other countries, much earlier. Mr Gadkari’s announcement that the shift will happen in the current fiscal year will thus reflect the actual construction done more accurately. Going by lane km, the total length of highways constructed during 2017-18 was 34,378 km as against 9,829 km if counted linearly.

While the shift is justified, the ministry should ensure two things at the earliest. One, rescale the road construction targets for an apples-to-apples comparison. For example, the ministry should not be tempted to compare its achievements arrived at by the new calculation criteria with targets set by the old method. This, if not corrected, can create considerable confusion about the ministry’s achievements. The fact is, under the old linear length method, the ministry was struggling to meet its targets. For instance, in 2015-16, daily road construction was just 17 km against a target of 41 km. In 2016-17, it was 22 km, and even though this improved in the last fiscal year, it was still 27 km in 2017-18. However, if one now recalculates these achievements using the lane-length formula, the 27 km daily construction average will zoom to 94 km — more than double the target. In other words, the ministry could fall into a trap of misrepresenting or overstating its achievement. Secondly, the ministry should also provide a back series for India’s road construction performance based on the new method. Unless these are done, the government’s achievements in road construction will run the risk of reduced credibility.