[phamilyman]

Folks,

Some of you must remember Tanveer's thread here:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian...y-highway.html

I was reminded of his post when traveling on the NH2 Faridabad to Agra last week to find a similar mess. Starting at 11pm from Gurgaon, I took 6 hours to reach Agra!! NH1 has been in a similar shape for many years.

I could be wrong (I'm not an accountant and I don't know about contracts but I firmly believe people act only as per incentives) but what actually happens when a six laning contract happens?
- I guess contractors don't get paid to ease people's drive but are asked to deliver on unrealistic timelines - thats why the NH2 concessionaire must have started work on like 20 flyovers right away - with none having made much headway.
There is no conceivable sense for digging up so many stretches of roads at once (unless the government forced them to bid for an unrealistic timeline - which is itself self-defeating). Doesn't it make more sense to say work on 10-20% of the highway length at any time, and the traffic fly through the rest?

- The agency does not maintain the main carriageway anymore. At all. In fact I suspect the old concessionaire stops maintaining it when they hear that the six laning will happen. They do a completely crappy patchwork that is bone jarring. The only saving grace is that there are no (or few) potholes! Its understanable for a privateplayer to spend as little on the main carriageway esp if it will be dug up or rebuilt in a few months. But what about the hapless traffic who suffer these broken roads for years, as projects (often) get delayed?

So what happens is a shame - we pay toll when a highway is being six laned, when the road is actually quite unsafe and takes longer than the original four lane highway did.

Instead, shouldn't the government reward the concessionaire for commissioning more stretches? The toll can be in slabs - commission 10% of the road length, get 10% toll, commission 50%, get 50%. Shouldn't the government encourage the road developers in such cases to provide a smoother experience rather than encourage unrealistic timelines while letting the driver experience/safety go to hell? Of course, i could be wrong - if you know of NHs which were six-laned yet traffic remained fast and safe, please share.

/to take another example - if you get your house whitewashed while living in it - you take twice/thrice the time, but you do it one room at a time, and not in all rooms at once, as one would do in an unoccupied house. It seems this logic doesn't apply to highways.
//it seems newspapers agree as well: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...w/16839345.cms
Two and a half years have passed (orig date per that article) and its clear that the road will remain a mess for almost as long. What a sad state of affairs. The government hasnt learned from the NH8/NH1 mess.

Mods: If there's a pre-existing thread on this subject(six laning), please feel free to merge them.

[utsav1303]

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