Road developers bid for projects, but do not rely on NHAI traffic data

When a top private equity firm placed its bid for the National Highway Authority of India’s (NHAI’s) toll-operate-transfer first round, its team had already spent months surveying traffic volumes on those stretches. This is not an exception, but a norm, where most road companies do not rely on the NHAI traffic estimates, but build their own.

With scope for inaccuracy and misreporting, industry officials prefer to stick to their own means. An email query sent to officials at the NHAI remained unanswered.

“The NHAI tenders these traffic surveys out to private companies, which opens it up to a possibility of