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-   -   Which State has the best Highways in India? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/street-experiences/241616-state-has-best-highways-india-3.html)

Voted for Rajasthan.

I have only driven in HR, HP, UP, UK, PB, CH, DL, RJ.

Among these, the Rajasthan Highways are a pure joy to use.

The results of this poll might be inaccurate by the way, owing to selection bias (respondents). If more people from Southern part of India participate, southern states will have higher votes. Same goes for Nothern, Western and Eastern parts as well. I would love to see the responses of those who have traveled to all four corners of the country by road within a defined period of time.

Pleasure to view that T.N. and Gujarat are emerging on the top. I voted for Maharashtra since most of my driving is here, but this state needs to make up the lost ground.

Had it been about two decades ago, Maharashtra would have surely bagged all the top honours. But now we read about bikers losing their lives, even on Expressways in Greater Mumbai (the capital) solely due to potholes.

Its TN for me as well!

Have had chance to drive on main and interior highways in TN and never disappointed. Driven in both day time and night.



I liked night drive even more as roads are well marked with good amount of reflectors.



One stretch I dont like driving is, Oddanchatram to Dindigul. Currently that stretch is nightmare.


Highway to Highwavys (Megamalai, Tamil Nadu) was blissful too. :D

Didn't vote for the simple reason, my highway experience is limited to Kerala, Tamilnadu and south Karnataka.

Barring the heavy crosswinds, the highways in southern Tamilnadu are just clap: The road surface south of Madurai had deteriorated in the recent past, but they have repaired it to a mirror finish in the last few months. Ofcourse, they are no access controlled expressways, and am pretty sure some desert highways in Rajasthan will be reminiscent of roads in GCC nations.

Unlike most of us here, you are in a position to properly compare the highways of different (most) states.;)

Used to hate the barricades, since they are the result of poor planning. No slip lanes or entry/exit lanes/ramps are the reason for the barricades to come up in the first place. But they are much preferred to speed bumps or money minting cameras.

And wide expressways shall remain an elusive dream for Kerala. I just go on Youtube and watch highway drive videos from Japan to get a feel of how the future would be for Kerala highways. Narrow, less runoff area, low speed limits...

Ironic that from having an aerodrome from the 1930s itself and India's first(?) cement highway, south Kerala had to wait till 2016 to have a proper 4 lane highway. The width of the highway near my house is roughly the same as the cement highway contructed before Independence!!! My grandfather when he built his business concern by the side of the highway left a good deal of land in front to make way for future widening. People would say he was not utilising the land properly. That was in the 1970s. That stretch still continues to be the same width. A proposal for a pan state expressway in the early 2000s was also shot down for socialist reasons. Now the government is working hard for a semi-high speed train. Talk about keeping the cart ahead of the horse.

In Karnataka, once you move outside the city, the roads are excellent- be it urban or state or national highways. Within the city premises, especially in Bangalore, the road conditions are bad specially due of ongoing constructions.

West Bengal road conditions are the poorest in my experience. Most of the state highways are riddled with potholes and occasional craters. It will be interesting to put out a vote for the States with worst overall highways.

From my last trip covering 13 states, almost all were on national highways, I would rank as follows

1. Rajasthan - Roads are well laid
2. Tamilnadu - Good road except at some junctions
3. Madhya Pradesh - Good roads, but the general traffic sense is not good and lots of cattle on the road.
4. Gujarat - Roads have not kept up properly at all places
5. Telangana - Good roads
6. Andhra Pradesh - Good roads
7. Maharashtra - Inconsistent
8. Uttar Pradesh - Inconsistent
9. Uttarakhand - Less wide at many places and construction going on at many places
10. Delhi - Roads are good but too crowded
11. Kerala - Well marked good roads except at few places. But too narrow for the vehicle density
12. Haryana - Bad roads, I think that is due to the farmer agitation
13. Karnataka - Unexpected potholes in the toll roads too particularly between tumkur and Hosur


Road conditions keeps on changing quite fast. During my trip in 2019, the roads in MP was quite horrible (may be due to construction).

There have been significant developments made in Uttarakhand, travelling through Haridwar has become a breeze and also the Roorkee bypass opened this year has reduced a significant amount of time. In my case, almost 2hrs of travelling time has been reduced!

I guess, your experiences are bit dated now. Admittedly, WB did not have good roads earlier but the roads, both NH and SH, in WB have seen drastic improvement in last couple of years. Of course, it still has to go a long way to catch up with other top states. A crucial yet painful route in WB has been the north-south highway (Kolkata - Siliguri). However, even this route has seen dramatic improvement in last few years.

6-laned Panagarh - Barakar section of NH-19 in WB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WfLkXsOKWI

Chichira - Kharagpur section of NH-49
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQzwW2HR8SI

A state highway (SH-6) in the hinterland of WB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirCJ5th_WQ

I am a regular commuter on highways of Gujarat and Rajasthan since last year. Had there been an option of choosing two States, it would have been these two. However, the Vadodara Mumbai side of the National Highway has a lot of truck traffic and it’s very difficult to maintain decent speed on that part of the highway. The Gujarat State highways are pretty good, plus there are no tolls for private vehicles on it.

Hands down winner Tamilnadu. Not just national/state highways, in TN even a hamlet will have decent roads.

They weren’t good 15 years back, but the state has done very well in the last decade.

I voted for TN, though there is a dated network along east-west surrounding Trichy.
It is not just the highways, but I must say they have done a decent job in agglomeration of urban areas in a way that pans the entire state. Whether it is by design, I don't know. You have Tuticorin port in the south that necessitates good roads to other industrial towns in and out of the state. The one weak link is the roads around the Cauvery delta. You have irrigation canals and fertile farm lands flanking dated roads with zero room for widening. You have some fossil fuel assets smack in the middle of this - don't know how they are going to solve this. Needs lot of creativity and setting aside political affiliation to achieve that. If you exit Trichy, there are great highways connecting Chennai in the north and Madurai/Kanyakumari to the south. But the highways beyond Tanjore in the east and to Coimbatore to the north west are dated and don't have medians. They make do with rails in this area...

Pretty sure the 3 votes to kerala were cast by mistake. �� National highways are a joke here except the Cherthala - Palakkad stretch. That said most of the State highways even though small are extremely well surfaced and still wider than the NH. Personal favorites are - Trivandrum-Thenmala road( absolutely rider's delight!) , Pala- Thodupuzha road and the recently re-surfaced road to Munnar. Road projects take ages to complete. The drive between the main cities of Trivandrum and Kochi is an absolute nightmare other than at night. I sure do hope that the governments at the centre and state get their act together and give us the roads we deserve.( Centre recently downgraded the priority level of Kasaragod- Trivandrum 4 laning project. Petty politics post poll debacle )
My vote goes to Tamil Nadu. Although the internal roads are not that good and the driving manners are absolutely crazy with mopeds crossing out of nowhere, the national highway is amazing! Have done numerous Trivandrum to Madurai, Chennai, Bangalore and even nasik runs.
God I wish we had such nice highways in kerala. ��

I have voted for Rajasthan.

I have driven in only 4 states so far - Maharashtra, MP, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Out of these I find the roads in Rajasthan are the best. Second comes Gujarat and Third MP.

The worst roads I have driven on are in Maharashtra. The Aurangabad to Pune road was of good quality earlier, but over the past two years the quality has severly deteriorated. The Aurangabad Nashik road was a nightmare to drive on till about 1 year back. Now it is almost fixed, with a bad stretch of only about 40 kilometres.

Thanks. Great subject. Absolutely essential in this forum, after all, cars need roads to run on and the state of our highways would heavily influence whether it would be advisable to take our own vehicles instead of taking the train (or even a bus) or plane on the next trip out of town.

I think this "State of the highways" should be a subtopic by itself, with every segment of the highway getting a rating from travelers on a regular basis. I wish Google Maps could come up with a color coded driveability index for all highways, it would be extremely handy for planning trips.

with the Yamuna Expressway, Lucknow/Ganga Expressway and the Buddh International Circuit, Uttar Pradesh gets my medal. 'nuff said.