Apropos Vinayak Chatterjee’s timely column “The high road to efficiency” (Infratalk, January 16), the attitude of the government and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) seems to be that people should be happy that they’re getting a four-lane highway at least. Build-operate-transfer (BOT) concessionaires also try to sneak in things (I believe with full tacit support from certain government functionaries) illegally to maximise profit. For example, the toll booths that mysteriously came up on NH4 before the ramp to the Bangalore International Airport were meant to extract money from the airport traveller as well as other users of the highway. The issue, however, did not go uncontested and the booths are now being dismantled and being located after the ramp.
The quality of engineering and innovation in highway design is also quite poor for a country of our needs. NHAI obviously cannot hire from the best. Given our “fit it and forget it” culture towards maintenance in general we need robust, all-weather roads designed and constructed to need no servicing for 25 years or a certain number of passenger km. But can anyone see that happening?
Vinaya Chandran Bangalore
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