Importance
of Roads:
Provides
last mile connectivity
Easy
contact between farms, fields, factories and provide door to door service
Less
affected by topography
Less
investment compared to railways
More
flexible than railways.
National
Highways:
Uttar
Pradesh has the largest length of National Highways followed by Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh – Sikkim has least length of 62 km as per
1999 numbers.
List of National Highways in India
List of National Highways in India
State
Highways:
Maintained
by State Government.
These
constitute 5.46% of total length of the roads.
Maharastra
(33,223 km) has the longest length of State Highway followed by Gujarat
(19,796km) and Madhya Pradesh (11,789)
as per 1999 data.
District
roads:
Account
for 31.74% of total road length of India
Maharasthra
leads in length followed by Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh
Village
Roads:
Length
of the roads has increased by 2,00,000 km to 10,28,000 km ( 5 fold increase )
between 1951 & 1999.
A
new thrust was given to village roads by PMGSY Programme where every village
with a population of 1000 ( in hilly areas 500) is connected with a all weather
pucca roads.
1.7
lakh unconnected habitatins were to be connected under this project.
National Highway Authority of India has envisaged
a major project National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) in several phases.
This
is due to the importance of these High ways have got in national economy their
length is just 2% in total length of roads (4,00,000 km) but carry 40% of the traffic.
Density
of Roads:
If
length of roads per 100 sqkm of surface area is considered, Kerala tops with
374.9 km followes by Goa (231 km) Orissa (148.72 ) km.
Lowest
density is founding J & K (9.6km) etc
India’s
average road length of 75 km per 100 km is low compared to Japan (294 km) 147
in France etc.