Govt is likely to modify the method of measuring highway construction in country from ‘road km’ to ‘lane km’ from this financial year as the focus now shifts to building more expressways and roads that are of at least four lanes. For comparison with past data, national highway construction details of earlier years will be converted to lane km, sources said.
Currently, linear length method is used for measuring progress of construction and widening of NHs. So, both a single kilometre of a six-lane road and a two-lane is treated as 1km. “Overall highway construction as per current road km norm is almost at peak. Now we are building more high-speed roads & expressways. Hence, going ahead with the current norms will have little relevance,” said a source. In fact, even railways calculate its laying of tracks and electrification in terms of route km.
Last year, a huge controversy had broken out after CAG, in its report, pointed to “very high” civil construction cost of the 29-km Dwarka expressway. While it had said that average cost per km stood at Rs 251 crore against Rs 18.2 crore per km approved by govt, highway ministry had pointed out how the stretch, including elevated and underground structures, was 563 lane km.
As per latest data, NH construction and widening during 2023-24 touched 12,349 km and 42% (5,193 km) of these were of more than four lanes. This is the maximum ever construction of such highway stretches.