Financing a road

A road requires finance at all stages. To plan, to construct and to maintain. Although planning and construction will be the most expensive and without finance will not result in a proper road, ignoring maintenance and appropriately financing for it would result in a very high total cost(cost over the life time of the project) due to the damage to the road and subsequent increase in all costs.

Apathy towards the condition of our roads

Like so many things that the average Indian has come to accept despite knowing that it is not proper(such as the poor electricity supply, poor standard of government services in general be it the hospitals, schools, local administration at village/panchayats or municipalities or metropolitan administrations, there seems to be an acceptance of the poor condition of roads. That does not mean there is no protest, demonstration or appeal to authorities. But there is no consistent and concerted effort until the objectives are achieved. Even when there is such concerted effort, the objectives themselves are set to such low level that, overall cost of the projects remain high. There is no understanding among people as to what constitutes a proper road. This is not surprising as the majority of Indian population have never seen a proper road. Those who have seen are few and seem to have not been able to dedicate the amount of effort and time that is required to achieve the objective of securing a proper road anywhere in the country. Unlike industries and services where private initiative has been able to achieve such objective, roads being essentially public property are very difficult to finance such private initiatives.

What is the situation of roads in India?

Any person landing in one of the international airports in India having visited any of the countries west of Afghanistan or east of Burma would notice as soon as they come outside the airport that the roads are very bad. To start with there will be a lot of pot holes that must have been there for years. They will also note that the surface is very uneven giving a bumpy ride. They will notice that the pedestrian ways by the side of the roads are not paved and a lot of digging here and there with dug up mud piled without any warning or enclosure for either pedestrians or for the traffic. All these will be noticeable for the person landing in India within a couple of kilometres of travel outside of the airport. After that let them go to any where in India, this would be a common site. They will notice that the Highways are not really anything like Highways, interstate roads, state roads, city roads and rural roads are all even worse. There are now some stretches of roads that have 4 lanes with barrier between the opposite directions of traffic. Even these are poor by international standards in terms of their safety, surface, junctions and crossings and so on.

Safe speeds in the highways are about 70 to 80km per hour(44 to 50 miles per hour). Even at this speed one will have to be extremely cautious as the chance of unexpected is a certainty e.g. a sudden bump or a sudden hole anywhere on the road, sudden road crossing by pedestrians and animals, sudden crossing by other traffic. Hence the average speed on a 100 km(62.5miles) journey would come down to a mere 50 km per hour(32miles per hour) there by taking 2 hours to complete the journey.


So on the whole the situation of roads in India is very bad.

Just imagine the amount of fuel consumption for these journeys. A road of international standard would easily reduce the fuel consumption by half. The life of the vehicle would certainly be doubled. The repair costs would be halved. More over, the number of accidents that result in loss of life could be reduced to at least to a quarter of the current number. Just the last advantage alone would pay for the cost of improving the roads. So there is no doubt that the current situation of roads is costing India heavily. So the current way of designing and building roads is proving very expensive. The way to cut the costs is not by cutting the corners in planning, building and maintaining the roads to achieve the sort of roads we have now, but by ensuring that we achieve international standard roads by appropriate investment, equipment, materials, planning, construction and maintenance.

What is a proper road?

I am wondering what is the meaning of a proper road? I suppose it is a road that serves the purpose. So it would depend on the location, the nature of traffic and amount of traffic on the road. In any case, if it should be considered as proper or good, it should provide a fast traffic movement, it should be safe and it should be pleasant. With all these criteria, there would be a trade off between quality and cost. I suppose like every thing else in life where there is such a trade off, lowest in quality does not mean lowest in cost. This is especially true if one considers the cost as a cost over the life time of the product, in this case the life time of road. Moreover, if the cost includes the total cost-not just the construction and maintenance of the road but also the costs that arise due to the condition of road such as the wear and tear of tyres, other vehicle repairs, but more importantly, cost of human lives as a result of accidents.
To be continued....