On a desolate road bordering India’s national capital region of Delhi, teams of workers toil away on India’s most ambitious infrastructure project ever: the world’s longest expressway that will stretch from Delhi to Mumbai, connecting India’s two largest cities. On the 1,380 kilometers (840 miles) of road, motorists will be able to travel between the two hubs in 12 hours, half the time it takes now and four hours less than making the journey on the nation’s speediest passenger train.
The two cities are currently connected by a four-lane route that is 300 kilometers longer than the planned project and passes through densely-populated areas. Cows often wander onto the pavement, snarling roads that are already congested. Motorists rarely travel more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour. On the new expressway, the speed limit will be 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour.
The existing road is a testament to India’s creaky infrastructure, a shortcoming that has plagued the country for decades and impeded business development. India has the world’s second-largest road network behind the U.S., but only 6% or so are national or state highways that connect population centers and important hubs such as ports, railway junctions, and industrial centers. Even those roads are narrow and congested.
The biggest bottlenecks are rural roads, comprising 70% of the network. They are unpaved, battered, and built on a single lane. Hazards, maintenance work, and dodging on-coming vehicles slows traffic to a crawl. Poor-quality roads contribute to India’s epidemic of traffic fatalities. The country accounts for 11% of all global road accident deaths; 150,000 people die in accidents annually, the highest total in the world, according to the World Bank.
More than 60% of India’s freight moves by road, but it must be transported on smaller, less efficient trucks that can maneuver the poor roads. As a result, freight costs are nearly double what they are in the United States, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank. Bad road connectivity is one of the main reasons nearly a third of the country’s fruits and vegetables rot before they reach domestic consumers or can be exported, says Akhilesh Srivastava, an expert on future mobility with the World Economic Forum.
Despite having the world’s sixth-largest economy, India ranked 44th out of 160 countries in the World Bank’s 2018 Logistics Performance Index, well behind China at No. 26, U.S. at No. 14, and first-place Germany.
India ranks 63 out 190 economies in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, and analysts say upgrading road infrastructure will be critical to the country’s ambition of improving business conditions and emerging as an alternate manufacturing hub to China.
India’s Ministry of Roads is pitching the new $13.5 billion Delhi to Mumbai project as the start of a new era in infrastructure spending.
“My aim is to construct 60,000 kilometers of world-class national highways by 2024, at the rate of 40 kilometers per day,” Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said at an annual conference on road development in India in July this year.
The eight-lane Delhi-Mumbai expressway, constructed by the state-run National Highway Authority of India, will meander through thick forests, blazing deserts and farmland in four states—Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Eventually, the road will connect India’s busiest port, Mumbai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on the Arabian Sea, with a new international airport that’s under construction outside of Delhi. One lane in each direction will be dedicated to electric vehicles, and in forested areas, eight-meter tall walls will deter animals from entering the roadway. The expressway will have limited entrances and exits so traffic can flow smoothly, and it will feature 94 roadside rest-stops with restaurants, fuel stations, repair shops, medical clinics, and hotels.
India’s federal cabinet approved a plan in October 2017 to construct and rebuild 34,800 kilometres (21,623 miles) of roads over five years. The highway authority aims to build 23 expressways by March 2025, and the Delhi-Mumbai expressway will serve as a model for the other projects.
The new national highway grid could boost India’s manufacturing prowess by slashing logistics costs and opening up India’s more remote areas to commerce, says Manish Aggarwal, partner and head of infrastructure at KPMG India.
The highway authority started building the Delhi-Mumbai expressway in September 2019. Last month, Gadkari said the project will be ready by March 2023, on schedule despite setbacks. When India imposed a national COVID lockdown in March 2020, workers abandoned the job site and left for their native homes. Work picked back up when federal authorities eased restrictions in July 2020, but hit a snag again when the Delta-driven COVID wave hit India earlier this year.
On-time completion of road projects is uncommon in India, where construction approvals, land acquisition, politics, and protests have hobbled highway development. Only 1 in 4 road projects were completed on time from 2018 to 2020, according to a report by Infomerics Valuation and Rating Pvt Ltd.
The expressway’s completion is still 18 months away, but anticipation is already building for its opening.
On Sohna road on the outskirts of Gurgaon, the northern Indian township that will mark the Delhi end of the highway, hotels, school buildings and shops have already sprung up on the edges of farmland.
“Our village has not seen such construction activity in several generations,” says Mubarak Ali, a resident of Alvalpur village, about 25 kilometers from Gurgaon and close to the expressway. “We are waiting for the day when we can take a bus to Mumbai.”
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