India drives a ₹2 tn road bypass plan

Move to help ease urban congestion and improve travel time

- Subhash Narayan

The government is set to roll out an ambitious ₹2 trillion plan to build a 10,000 km network of bypasses and ring roads around about 500 cities and towns over five years in a bid to ease urban congestion and improve travel time and freight movement on national highways, two people aware of the development said.

The programme, to run through FY31, marks a significant expansion of the government's earlier plan to build bypasses and ring roads around 50 cities with a population of one million or more, which was reported by Mint earlier.

The expanded initiative will extend the government's earlier focus on larger cities to tier-II and tier-III cities and towns along major highways, covering urban centres with populations of at least 100,000, as smaller towns increasingly emerge as congestion hotspots that impede movement of vehicles on highways.

“The idea is to take this initiative to roughly 500 cities in the first phase up to 2030,” the first person quoted above said on condition of anonymity. As per the 2011 census, India has around 500 cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

The ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) will assess the traffic situation and choke points across cities nationwide and take action on building bypasses and ring road networks, this person said.