NEW DELHI: Ahmedabad-Vadodara section of NH-48 is the best rated national highway in the country followed by the corridor from Goa/Karnataka border to Kundapur in Karnataka. In the first ever ranking of NH stretches carried out by the NHAI where toll is being collected, 31 out of 219 such stretches have scored more than 80 marks on a scale of 0 to 100.
The scores of all these stretches with a cumulative length of nearly 19,000 km were released by Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday. NHAI officials said this was a move to make the key highway construction authority "accountable" to the users who pay for using the NH stretches. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019 had asked the highway ministry to rank NH stretches on quality and safety parameters.
While Delhi-Meerut Expressway ranked at 35, the access controlled Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway is at 103. The 63.5 km NH stretch from Delhi/ Haryana border to Rohtak has received the second lowest score.
"We will carry out this mechanism of giving scores to all completed highway stretches in every six month. This will put pressure on highway builders, concessionaires and also our own officers to take corrective measures," said NHAI chairman SS Sandhu.
The NHAI has included the completed highway and expressway stretches that are of four or six lanes. and the scoring was done based on 39 parameters broadly categorised into three main criteria - highway efficiency (45 marks), highway safety (35 marks) and user services (20 marks) evaluated on a total score of 100 marks.
"This entire work has been done by NHAI itself without appointing a consultant. This has been done with the intention to improve the quality of public services. We will cover all the completed stretches under NHAI in the following phases," said a source. Officials also admitted that there is a need to involve a third party or road users to give the score for different stretches. "This is possible through a good app," one of them said.