Over 1000 km road network to be developed in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: A road network of over 1,000 km will be developed in Odisha besides two ring roads and two logistic parks under the Centre’s most ambitious Bharatmala programme, which includes development of 44 economic corridors, 66 inter corridor routes and 116 feeder routes.

On Tuesday, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had approved Phase I of Bharatmala Pariyojana that focuses on optimising efficiency of road traffic movement across the country by bridging critical infrastructure gaps.

The road projects include 689 km of economic corridors, 302 km of inter-corridors, 64 km of port connectivity roads and 500 km of coastal roads.While 360 km Sambalpur-Paradip economic corridor will pass through Angul, Dhenkanal and Cuttack districts, 329 km Sambalpur-Ranchi economic corridor will traverse via Jharsuguda, Sundargarh and Rourkela.

Similarly, three road projects - Keonjhar-Chandikhol (136 km), Jharsuguda-Tileibaini (85 km) and Jharphokharia-Balasore (81 km) have been included in the inter corridor road segment.
The Centre has planned to build coastal roads linking Chhatarpur with Satpada (70 km) and Konark with Digha (430 km) via Astarang, Naugaon, Paradip port, Ratanpur, Dharma, Basudevpur and Chandaneshwar.

Four-laning of 58 km Jamujhadi-Dhamra road has been planned to provide road connectivity to Dhamra Port and 6 km road from Gopalpur Port to NH-16 from Chhatrapur to be expanded.
While Sambalpur and Bhubaneswar are among 28 cities which have been proposed for Ring Roads, Jagatsinghpur and Sundargarh are in the list of 35 proposed logistic parks on National corridors which will cater to key production and consumption centers accounting for 45 per cent of India’s road freight.
Apart from a Road Over Bridge (ROB) at Balasore along Chennai-Kolkata corridor, the project also envisages improving the efficiency of the existing National corridors by decongesting its choke points through lane expansion and bypasses or elevated corridors at identified points.

Accordingly, lane expansion and flyovers have been planned at Cuttack and Sambalpur for Sambalpur-Paradip corridor, at Rourkela and Sambalpur for Sambalpur-Ranchi corridor and at Sambalpur for Mumbai-Kolkata economic corridors. Bhadrak has been identified as a congestion point along the Chennai-Kolkata corridor where interventions are to be planned.
Projects which are connecting to ports and industrial or commercial hubs and other economically and strategically important locations will be given priority.

As per the modalities set for the programme, ring road or bypass projects will be taken up for construction by NHAI on priority basis if the State Government provides at least 25 per cent of the land acquisition cost.Earlier, the State Government had urged the Centre for infrastructural development of ports under the Sagarmala project to give a big push to coastal shipping in the State. It had sought connectivity for three major ports at Paradip, Gopalpur and Dhamra.