Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   The Indian Car Scene (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/)

-   -   India eyes huge rise in road building (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/60752-india-eyes-huge-rise-road-building.html)

Good news for motorists.
A few statistics:-
Inviting bids for 200 national highway projects equivalent of 13000km of road.
Seems one quarter of this is already at a pre-qualification stage for tenders
92b$ planned investment in 5 years till 2012
Increase road construction to 10 fold.
Planned to set up a government “roads finance corporation"

FT.com / Asia-Pacific / India - India eyes huge rise in road building

I like the idea mooted to have a infrastructure fund. It would increase funding by the people and also help in bringing down taxes for the people who are contributing to country's growth.

A new joke for making money and creating trouble for very few good disciplined tax payers.
We pay tax on what not, fuel, car, road, house even service tax. We give employment to someone and pay tax on it too. Well, the end reality is that our road conditions will never improve, traffic will get worse. These are just a few jokes. If the government were really serious in infrastructure, changes would have been visible within three years. It would have shown in quality of roads that we are facing.

I am not in support of paying a single penny more in terms of tax. And I am sure they are never going to bring down tax.

Dont trust the great Indian government.

ROFL, huge road buiding. What they mean is they will dig up more roads and keep making them forever, and milk the motorists even more!

And more tolls?

Whats the use? stand in a long toll queue every 100kms is not really any progress as far a travelling by roads is concerned.

There might be many toll roads, if we can take it at the face value of Kamal Nath. I saw his interview in CNBC TV18 and he said that there are many contractors objecting to the toll roads, there isn't sufficient traffic on these roads for them to make money.

I do have some hope that we will see better focus than what we had with TR Baalu as surface transport minister. His record was pathetic to say least. Hopefully, after NDA's regmine this will improve better with Kamal Nath and we will see speedy progress on all the NHAI projects.

Wonder when we will get those multiple grade separators across the cities.

I think it would be good if some of that 92B $ are routed towards completing unfinished and repair of damaged roads.

The road will build with tax payer money. Some more corporate and people will become rich. But end of the day you need to high toll tax while using the road. Its good if they build the road with out any toll gate/tax.

It seems some one in the government is reading our NEW Govt at Center - your wishlist as motorist in which several members had requested for good roads, improved road, better highways etc.

this is a very good project. there were objections to GQ project when BJP government of Mr. Vajapyee announced it, now we all see the benefits.

National Highways are indeed roads toward progress for all the towns/villages through which it goes through stimulating economic activity.

some people get the value of the land unlocked
some people start shops, hotels, tea shops etc
some people start the new transport business
it bring down the distance and enable people to save time
De-congests the cities by creating employment in new geographies
etc, etc

we can see the benefits only after 10 years.

The required investment AFAIK is in the order of 350 billion dollars. As pointed out in one of the other threads, the NHAI is re floating tenders with the big flyovers and wide services lanes kicked out for reducing costs. They haven't had any takers for some of the highway projects because of the high costs, that the tolls are never able to cover!

OT but cant help it.
Reading the comments here, this is what i infer. Everyone wants good roads. But no one will pay for it. It is the governments to take care of funding. Beg or borrow , who cares. But dont take it from the citizens, right? No matter how much you earn, you will think a million times before giving a part of it to the government. What a shame.

Here is a fact: Running a country with 1b+ people is not as easy as your 9-5 job and neither is it cheap.

PS: I dont intend to continue discussion on this comment, cos I know I can't change your views.

Why are you so pessimistic ?

pay a visit to the old mum-pune highway in Pimpri-Chinchwad area ( this is a twin city adjacent to Pune) -- you would love the roads made

As soon as BJP government was out of power, the Congress government did not pay much heed to finishing GQ projects. The entire GQ is not really the GQ BJP government had planned.

Apart for others getting employment, the comes out this : We pay many many taxes, innumerable to say the least. Why so costly fuel ? TAX. Why so costly automobiles ? TAX. ...The list goes on.

And one more important thing, for how long you think the road will hold up ? Within two or three years, the quality of road will deteriorate and soon it will become a bad road.

I would consider this not as OT.
How much tax we have to pay man ? List down and think how much tax. The taxpayers are not much and from that itself there are very few honest tax payers. This is ground reality one has to accept and this is the truth. My father is paying hefty income tax, paying for costly fuel, paying for house, etc. Did the government consider than even when we are building house, we are providing employment to others, etc.

We pay too much through our nose. Those who pay know the pain. I believe after paying so much, we deserve good quality fuel, roads atleast in city. Where I stay, literally I can make an Arjun tank rattle more than anything on earth.

Its a reality that most of the projects are nothing but one means to earn money. From what I have heard, if a specfic sign is made for a road contract, the authority who has signed will get 5% of total cost of project. Beat that.
The current conditions of atleast city roads speak volumes about what our government is upto.

After paying so much tax and being disciplined, we are yet to get good approach roads. We are living in the houes from where I am typing in this for around 9 years now. 5 yeas of construction. We have heard that there will be ring road behind our house. We built this property thinking we will have a proper approach road. That road is still not coming up.

Reality is too bad to even think, let alone surviving.


What I think :
1) No road should be toll road. If it is then reduction in tax is must.
2) Quality of roads in city needs to be improved. First fix what you are having at hand before laying down new projects. This is pure corruption.
3) Before making hyper fast roads ( people will go beyond one speed if cost of fuel is more ) consider that for real progress, attack the traffic congesation problem in cities first. 93 kms expressway in one hour. From there one hour to reach specific destination is bad.
The real problem that is acting as dampner for our economy is traffic congesation in cities. People spend more than 2 hours travelling 40 kms one way.