Road transport

The Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways are responsible for the formation and implementation of policies and programmes for the development of various modes of transport.

India has one of the largest road networks in the world, aggregating to 46.90 lakh km at present. National Highways is the responsibility of the Central Government has 96,214 km length. Generally, a lane has a width of 3.75 km in case of single lane and 3.5 m per lane in case of multilane National Highways.

The Ministry is carrying out development and maintenance work of National Highways through three agencies viz., National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), State Public Works Dept. (PWDs) and Border Roads Organisation (BRO)

Budgetary Support

A part of cess (under Central Road Fund) is allocated to National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to fund the NHDP

• External Assistance through World Bank, ADB, JBIC, and so on.
• Public Private Partnership(PPP)
• Market Borrowings by NHAI

National Highways Development Project (NHDP)

The National Highways Development Project is a project to upgrade, rehabilitate and widen major highways in India to a higher standard. The project was implemented in 1998.

It is the largest highway project ever undertaken in the country. This project is managed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in phases I to VIL

The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ; 5,846 km) connects four major cities, viz; Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Koikata. The North-South and East- West Corridor (NS - EW; 7,142 km) connecting Srinagar in the north to Kanyakumari in the South, including spur from Salem to Kanyakumari {Via Coimbatore and Kochi) and Silchar in the east to Porbandar in the west. The NHDP also includes Port Connectivity Project comprising a length of 380 km for improvement of roads connecting 12 major ports in the country and other projects involving a length of 965 km.

SARDP-NE

Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North - Eastern Region : It aims at improving road connectivity to State capitals with district headquarters in NE region.

Central Road Fund

Central Road Fund was established under the Act of 2000.

Money comes from Rs.2 per liter as cess on petrol and High speed Diesel. (Additional excise duty)

Money thus collected, first goes to the Consolidated Fund of India, from there, Central Government allocates money to Central Road Fund (CRF) from time to time, after deducting the expenses of collection.

Money is used to develop and maintain national, state and village roads, railway overbridges, underbridges and other safety measures

Border Roads Organizations (BRO)

It is a road construction executive force, integra! to and in support of the Army. It started opérations in May 1960. It maintains roads that serve the borders areas of India.The major achievements of the BRO are as under :

• The entrustment of the construction of 8.80 km long Rohtang tunnel, related access roads to its portais and a 292 km long Alternate Route to Leh. Length of approach road to South Portai of Rohtang tunnel is 11.750 km and to the North Portai is 0.975 km,
• The BRO has been entrusted with the four- laning of a stretch of NH-1A from Jammu- Vijaypur as part of NHDP's North-South corridor, on behalf of the NHAI.
• Part of Phase 'A' of SARDP-NE has been entrusted to BRO.
• It has completed a unique structure of 120 m long Cut and Cover tunnel at KM 141.80 on NH - 44 near Sonapur in Meghalaya in 2008.
• 763.50 m long Passighat bridge on NH - 52 has been completed during 2010 -11.
• BRO has also constructed the 218 Km Delaram Zaranj road 606 in Afganistan.

National Highways

• On 28 April 2010, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways officially published a new numbering system for the national highway network in the Gazette of the Government of India.
• It is a systematic numbering scheme based on the orientation and the geographic location of the highway. This was adopted to ensure more flexibility and consistency in the numbering of existing and new national highways.

As per the new numbering system:

• All north-south oriented highways will have even numbers increasing from the east to the west.
• All east-west oriented highways will have odd numbers increasing from the north to the south.
• All major Highways will be single digit or double digit in number.
• Three digit numbered highways are secondary routes or branches of a main highway. The secondary route number is prefixed to the number of the main highway. For example, 144, 244, 344 etc. will be the branches of the main NH44
• Suffixes A, B, C, D etc. are added to the three digit sub highways to indicate very small spin-offs or stretches of sub-highways

Bharatmala project

• The total investment for the Bharatmala plan is estimated at Rs10 trillion—the largest ever outlay for a government road construction scheme. The ambitious ?10-lakh-crore umbrella programme for roads, Bharatmala, will subsume all existing highway projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998.
• The project will start from Gujarat and Rajasthan, move to Punjab and then cover the entire string of Himalayan states - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal , Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Special emphasis will be given on providing connectivity to far-flung rural areas including the tribal and backward areas. According to government officials working out the details of the scheme, the total road length to be developed as expressways under Bharatmala will be around 51,000 km. In the first phase 29,000 km will be developed with an outlay of Rs5.5 trillion.

Components of Bharat Mala Project:

• Construction of national highways through coastal/border areas, ports, backward areas, religious and tourist sites.
• Border and coastal connectivity will cover 7,000 kms of National Highways at an estimated cost of Rs 80,000 Crore.
• Construction, strengthening and widening of approximately 1,500 major bridges and 200 Railway Over Bridges (ROBs)/Railway Under Bridges (RUBs) on national highways.
• Improvement of the newly declared National Highways providing better connectivity to district headquarters. Improving connectivity to Char Dham i.e. the pilgrimage sites of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunothri&Gangotri in Uttarakhand.
• Enhancing freight traffic along the identified 44 economic (freight) corridors, inter-corridors and feeder-routes for development. The corridors include, among others, Mumbai-Kochi-Kanyakumari, Bengaluru-Mangaluru, Hyderabad-Panaji and Sambalpur-Ranchi.
• Upgrading roads with dividers, pedestrian ways, underpasses, and installation of signaling and lighting systems.
• Use of the Border Roads Organization (BRO) services to build roads on rougher terrain.

Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beautification & Maintenance) Policy-2015

For Highway projects to be environmentally sustainable, it is necessary that the natural resources lost in the process of Highway construction are restored in one way or the other. This requires that ecological needs are taken into consideration from the stage of project planning and designing to its execution. The Highways developed as green corridors not only sustain biodiversity and regenerate natural habitat but also benefit all stakeholders, from road users to local communities and spur eco-friendly economic growth and development.

With these aims Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has framed Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beautification & Maintenance) Policy-2015. The vision is to develop eco-friendly National Highways with participation of the community, farmers, NGOs,private   sector,   institutions,   government agencies  and  the   Forest  Department.

The objective is to reduce the impacts of air pollution and dust as trees and shrubs along the Highways act as natural sink for air pollutants and arrest soil erosion at the embankment slopes. Plants along highway median strips and along the edges reduce the glare of oncoming vehicles which sometimes become cause of accidents. The community involvement in tree plantation directly benefits local people by generating employment. The Panchayats, NGOs and other Self Help Groups (SHGs) will be involved in the process of planting and maintenance. The plant species selected will be region specific depending on local conditions such as rainfall, climate type of soil etc. For example at some places soil conditions may suit for plantation of Jamun or mango trees while at other places plants and grasses can be grown to derive biomass. Wherever possible, transplantation of existing trees will be given preference while widening the roads.

The policy aims at changing the whole process for the avenue plantation and landscape improvement. Earlier, the land needed for these activities was not considered during the Detailed Project report (DPR) stage. Now the new policy has recommended that the requirement of land for tree plantation should be included in the Land Acquisition Plans prepared by the DPR consultants. This move will help in pre-planning of the plantation activities and the space required for the same, so that there is a systematic plan before the construction of National Highways. One percent of the civil cost of the road projects will be for developing green corridors.

To ensure accountability a monitoring Agency will conduct performance audit of executing agencies for  various  projects  on  an  Annual  basis  and  award of  new contracts to the agencies will be decided based on their past performance.

INDIAN EXPRESSWAYS

These are six or eight lane highways with controlled access. Such roads have 7m-wide divider. These high intensity highways have separate tunnels for traffic in each direction. Complete fencing is done to avoid humans and animals crossing the expressway. No two-wheelers, three-wheelers or tractor vehicles allowed. Provision of petrol pumps, motels, workshops, toilets, emergency phones, first aid and breakdown vans are made for emergencies.  Riparian green belts are also developed along with the Expressways.

Few include

Nature of projects involved in the development of transport infrastructure

BOT (BUILD – OPERATE - TRANSFER)

finds extensive application in the infrastructure projects in public–private partnership. In the BOT framework a third party, for example the public administration, delegates to a private sector entity to design and build infrastructure and to operate and maintain these facilities for a certain period. During this period the private party has the responsibility to raise the finance for the project and is entitled to retain all revenues generated by the project and is the owner of the regarded facility. The facility will be then transferred to the public administration at the end of the concession agreement, without any remuneration of the private entity involved. Some or even all of the following different parties could be involved in any BOT project:

• The host government
• The concessionaire
• Lending banks
• National or regional development banks
• Parties to the project contracts

BOT Project suffers from multiple risks:

Political risk: especially in the developing countries because of the possibility of dramatic overnight political change.

Technical risk: construction difficulties, for example unforeseen soil conditions, breakdown of equipment

Financing risk: foreign exchange rate risk and interest rate fluctuation, market risk (change in the price of raw materials), income risk (over-optimistic cash-flow forecasts), cost overrun risk

Advantages of BOT

• Encourage private investment
• Inject new foreign capital to the country
• Transfer of technology and know-how
• Completing project within time frame and planned budget
• Providing additional financial source for other priority projects
• Releasing the burden on public budget for infrastructure development.

The other models are:

• BOOT (build–own–operate–transfer)
• BOO (build–own–operate)
• BLT (build–lease–transfer)
• DBFO (design–build–finance–operate)
• DBOT (design–build–operate–transfer)
• DCMF (design–construct–manage–finance)

RAILWAYS

Railways are an extremely efficient form of transportation. The railways generate less pollution and involve fewer accidents. Indian railway system is the main artery of the country’s inland transport. Indian railways virtually form the life-line of the country, catering to its needs for large scale movement of traffic, both freight, and passenger, thereby contributing to economic growth and also promoting national integration. The first rail in India was started in 1853 between Bombay and Thane over a distance of 34 km. But the real progress started after 1857 only. In 1900, the total length of railway network was nearly 40,000 km. At the time of partition, Indian railways were run by 37 companies. The total length of railway network at that time was 65,900 m out of which 54,700 km remained in India. The total route-length of India railway is 63,273 km on which 47,375 trains ran covering 7,025 stations. At present, Indian railway network is the biggest in Asia and the fourth largest of the world.

Indian railways entered the Metro Age during 1984-85.

The Railways have also introduced fast goods trains to carry priority goods quickly to their destinations. Container service has been introduced to provide door to door service which the trucks had been doing so far. The container services reduce transport and delivery time. They ensure greater security of goods and freedom from pilferage. The services have proved more economic in both the railways and its customers.

Gauges of Indian Railways

Indian railways comprise three gauges:

Broad Gauge. This gauge has 1.675 metres distance between the two lines. More than 55% (34,880 km) length of Indian railways is broad gauge.

Metre Gauge. The distance between two rails is one metre. About 38% (23, 419 km) of Indian railways is metre gauge.

Narrow Gauge. This is of two types. One is 0.762 metre and the other is 0.610 metre broad. It is confined to hilly areas only. Nearly 7% (4,068 km) of the Indian railways is narrow gauge.

Distribution of Indian Railways

North Indian Plain. This region has a very dense network of railways from Amritsar to Howrah. This is a plain area which is very much suitable for the construction of railways. This densely populated region has highly developed agriculture and industry. Large scale urbanization has also helped in the development of the railways. The density  of railway network is closely related to the agricultural and industrial development. There are a few focal points such as Delhi, Kanpur, Mughal Sarai, Lucknow, Agra and Patna. However,  Delhi is the main point from where railway lines radiate in all directions. For political administrative and economic reasons, Delhi is connected with major ports like Mumbai, Kolkatta (Howrah) and Chennai through superfast trains.

Peninsular Plateau. The whole of Peninsular Plateau has hilly and plateau terrain which hinders the development of railways. The population density is also moderate. For such reasons, excepting, Saurashtra and Tamil Nadu, a relatively open and more loose network has developed here. Trunk routes are aligned in such a way that there are efficient connections between Mumbai - Chennai, Chennai-Cochin, Chennai-Delhi and Chennai-Hyderabad.

Himalayan Region. Railways are practically absent in the Himalayan region. The rugged terrain, hill and valley topography, backward economy and sparse population are the factors in this region. The only railway lines are narrow-gauge. Some of the important rail links are Kalka-Shimla, Pathankot-Kangra and Siliguri-Darjeeling. There is practically no railway line in the north-eastern states of Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. These areas have rough terrain covered with thick forests. The population is sparse and the economy is in a backward state. Construction of railways under these conditions is a difficult and a costly affair.

Coastal Plains. There is a distinct contrast in the rail network between eastern coastal plains and western coastal plains. There exists a long trunk route all along the east coast but such a rail track is missing along the western coast from Mumbai to Cochin. The outcrops of the Western Ghats being very close to the coast, restrict the wider and the Ghats life away from the coast.

DEVELOPMENTS ON DEDICATED FREIGHT CORRIDOR PROJECT

The Dedicated Freight Corridor project will connect a land mass over 3300 kilometers in the country and could prove to be a backbone of India’s economic transport facility. The Western corridor from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust near Mumbai will be 1499 kilometers.  The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor from Ludhiana to Dankuni will be 1839 kilometer long. The nodal authority Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation India Limited (DFCCIL) is overseeing progress of work with the target project completion rate of March 2017.  Presently, 67 per cent of the land acquisition has been completed and as of now the project by and large is on target.  Funding has been tied up with the World Bank for 1183 km section of Eastern DFC from Khurja to Mughalsarai for US$ 2.72 billion  in May 2011 and Loan Agreement for US$ 975 million for the first sector viz Kanpur-Khurja, (343 km) has been signed in October. 2011.  Construction work of 54 major and important bridges in Vaiterna-Bharuch section of Western DFC is in progress and five major bridges have been completed.

Green Initiatives

In a significant move towards clean environment in platforms and railway tracks, Indian Railways has inducted biotoilets (green toilets) on certain trains. This type of toilets has been designed jointly by Indian Railways and DRDO. These biotoilets are well suited to unique requirement of Indian Railways passenger coaches. Eight trains are presentably running with approximately 500 biotoilets and the results are very encouraging. It is now planned that 2500 biotoilets will be inducted in the next year.

UNESCO World heritage: Indian Railways

• Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus): designed by British architect F. W. Stevens, Gothic style.
• Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
• Nilgiri Mountain Railway
• Kalka Shimla Railway

Bullet trains

• Railways is doing pre-feasibility studies for running high-speed trains (popularly referred to as bullet trains) at speeds above 350 kmph.
• Initially, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor has been taken up for which the pre-feasibility study has been completed.
• A study is also being done on the Delhi-Mumbai route for raising the speed of passenger trains from 160 kmph to 200 kmph, i.e. for running semi-high speed trains
• These corridors will be set up through PPP route

SPART

• Self Propelled Accident Relief Trains (SPART)
• Railways aims to put SPART trains in all divisions by 2017

IT initiatives

• Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs), Coin-operated Ticket Vending Machines (CO-TVMs)
• Use of Aadhars/UID for booking of tickets, validation of genuine passengers with GPS enabled handheld gadgets in trains
• E-ticketing possible through mobile phones
• SMS Alerts to passengers providing updates on reservation status
• Covering larger number of trains under Real Time Information System (RTIS), whereby rail-users will be able to access information through nominated websites and mobile phones

Green Energy Initiatives

• Railway Energy Management Company (REMC) to harness potential of solar and wind energy;
• Setting up of 75 MW windmill plants
• Energizing 1000 level crossings with solar power;
• New generation energy efficient electric locomotives and electrical multiple units (EMUs) saving about 60 crore units in 2011-12.
• More usage of agro-based and recycled paper and ban use of plastic in catering.

Railway Zones

RAIL AVTARAN

The Ministry of railways has proposed to transform Indian Railways through 7 Mission Mode activities – Avataran..

1. Mission 25 Tonne:

• Aims to increase revenue by augmenting carrying capacity
• To achieve this 10-20% freight loading will be done through 25-tonne axle-load wagons in 2016-17 and target movement of 70% of freight traffic on high axle load wagons by FY19-20.

2. Mission Zero Accident:

It comprises of 2 sub-missions:

• Elimination of unmanned level crossings: The goal is eliminate all unmanned level crossings on Broad Gauge in the next 3-4 years through innovative financing mechanisms.It will reduce deaths due to accidents and improve throughput of the network.
• TCAS (Train Collision Avoidance System): An indigenous technology has been developed to equip 100% of the High Density Network with TCAS in the next 3 years. This will prevent head on collisions and improve throughput by increasing average sectional speeds.

3. Mission PACE (Procurement and Consumption Efficiency):

• Aims to improve our procurement and consumption practices to improve the quality of goods and services
• It will introduce a culture of optimum usage by adopting practices such as Vendor Managed Inventory, direct procurement of High Speed Diesel (HSD), new procedures for identification and disposal of scrap.
• Comprehensive review of procurement and consumption of HSD will lead to saving more than Rs 1,500 crore in 2016-17

4. Mission Raftaar:

• It targets doubling of average speeds of freights trains and increasing the average speed of superfast mail/express trains by 25 kmph in the next 5 years.
• Loco hauled passenger trains will be replaced by Diesel Electric Multiple Unit (DEMU) trains over the next five years.
• It will complement Mission 25 Tonne to increase throughput of the railway system

5. Mission 100

• This mission will commission at least a 100 sidings in the next 2 years.
• The current siding/ Private Freight Terminal (PFT) policy would be revised to elicit greater private participation. An online portal will be operated for accepting and processing all new applications, along with decentralization of powers

6. Mission beyond Book-keeping

• It will establish an accounting system where outcomes can be tracked to inputs.
• This will transform Indian Railways as right accounting would determine right costing and hence right pricing and right outcomes

7. Mission Capacity Utilisation

• It proposes to prepare a blueprint for making full use of the huge new capacity that will be created through 2 Dedicated Freight Corridors between Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata scheduled to be commissioned by 2019.

Shipping

India has the largest merchant shipping fleet among the developing countries, and ranks 20th in the world in shipping tonnage. As compared to 1.92 lakh GRT (Gross Registered Tonnage) at the time of independence, the country’s operative tonnage as in 2008-09 is 8.83 million GRT.

The only government shipping company viz - shipping Corporation of India is one of the biggest shipping lines in the world, has a merchant fleet of  around 79 vessels . The tonnage of SCI accounts for about 31 per cent of the total Indian tonnage. The Mogul Line Ltd, a public sector shipping company, was merged with the SIC on June 30, 1986.

There are four major and four medium size shipyards in India. There are another 32 small shipyards in the private sector which caters to domestic requirements for small crafts.

Of the major ones Hindustan Shipyard Ltd., Visakhapatnam and Cochin Shipyard Ltd., are under the control of the Ministry of Surface Transport. The other ones namely, Mazagon Dock Ltd., Mumbai and Garden Reach Ship-builders & Engineers, Kolkatta are under the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence.

The Hindustan Shipyard established in mid-forties originally by Scindia Steam Navigation Company and taken over the Central Government in 1961, has built 91 ships since 1947.

100% FDI is allowed in shipping sector

India’s coastline: 7517 km

9 Maritime states (5 in Western coast and 4 in Eastern Coast)

13 major ports (guided by Central Government) and 200 non-major (minor) ports (guided by respective State governments)

National Automatic Identification System (AIS)

To provide information about the ship to other ships and to navy, coast guard etc. automatically.

This information includes the ship’s identity, type, position, course, speed, navigational status to prevent collision, helps in search and rescue operations and coastal surveillance. Contract given to Swedish defense company “Saab”- they fitted systems on Indian lighthouses for AIS tracking.

Data will be used by directorate general of lighthouses and lightships (DGLL), the Navy, Coast Guard and DG Shipping.

Transchart

• It is the centralized ship chartering wing of the shipping ministry.
• To make shipping arrangements for Government Controlled cargoes
• Vallarpadam
• India’s first dedicated international container transshipment terminal setup here.
• This project reduces our dependence on foreign ports for transshipment of India’s export-import containers.

Adam’s Bridge / Ram Sethu

The Indian coastline and the Sri Lanka are presently separated by a  shallow sea called Sethu Samudram which comprises of Gulf of Mannar, Palk bay and Adam's Bridge, also known as ram sethu.

The Adam's Bridge is a discontinuous series of limestone shoals across the Palk Strait. The presence of these shoals makes it impossible for ships and boats to cross the strait. As a result the ships have to navigate around Sri Lanka travelling an extra 700 kilometres and 30 hours. This extra travel raises costs and delays the transportation between the eastern and western coastlines of India.

The circumnavigation around Sri Lanka also has strategic ramifications as it inhibits seamless movement of Indian Navy along the Indian shoreline.

Due to these reasons there is a proposal  to dredge a canal across the shallow waters to create an artificial passage for the ships. But the proposal is being opposed on several grounds.

• As per Hindu mythology the Ram sethu has religious significance and hence the project is being opposed as it would lead to destruction of Ram Sethu.
• There is also opposition of the project on environmental grounds as the dredging activity will harm the bio-diverse  region of Gulf of Manna marine biosphere reserve .
• Also, there is concern for loss of livelihood of fishermen in the region if the area becomes a major shipping route.

Due to these considerations there have been delays and even involvement of Supreme Court. But the dominant view of all successive governments have been to go ahead with the project due to its economic and strategic ramifications and detailed studies on the project are going on.

Ports

Ports are a crucial part of the transportation infrastructure of the country. Transportation by ship is highly energy efficient can be increasingly used for intra-India traffic, and for international trade. Inland water transport today accounts for only 0.15 per cent of domestic transportation, and there are opportunities for considerable growth. Intra-India shipping on the coastline and along rivers can become important alternatives in the Indian transportation scenario.

At an administrative level, ports are divided into “major ports” (where the central government plays policy and regulatory functions) and “minor ports” (which are guided by state governments). As of today, the 13 major ports handle about 80 per cent of the traffic. They are chennai, Cochin, Ennore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kandla, Kolkata, Marmagao, Mumbai, New Mangalore, Paradip, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam and Port Blair. There are 187 minor and intermediate ports, 43 of which handle cargo. The minor ports are located in Gujarat(40), Maharashtra (53), Goa (5), Daman & Diu (2), Karnataka (9), Kerala (13), Lakshadweep (10), Tamil Nadu (14), Pondicherry (1), Andhra Pradesh (12), Orissa (2), West Bengal (1) and Andaman & Nicobar (23).

Minor ports constitute an important competitive alternative to the centrally regulated ‘major ports’.

Kandla : In Kuchchh kandla was the first port developed soon after Independence to ease the increased pressure on Mumbai port in the Wake of loss of Karachi to Pakistan. In order to cater to the north western part of the country namely Rajasthan, Haryana Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, Kandla was developed as a major port. Kandla is  a tidal port. A free trade zone has also been developed to accelerate its growth. It handles crude oil, petroleum products, fertilizers, foodgrains, salt, cotton, cement, sugar and edible oils.

Mumbai is the biggest port with a very spacious natural well-sheltered harbor. It also handles between a quarter and fifth of the country’s foreign trade in a petroleum and petroleum products, machinery and other dry cargo.