Introduction

• India has the second largest road network in the world.
• 314 million kms of roadways spread across the length and breadth of the country.
• The roads are primarily made of bitumen, with some Indian National Highways having concrete roads.
• The concept of expressway roads is also catching up in India, and the Mumbai-Pune expressway and Delhi Gurgaon expressway are the finest examples.

National Highways in India

• The National Highways are the principal highways moving across the length and breadth of the nation, joining important harbors, big commercial and tourism hubs, state capitals, and so on.
• National Highways in the country are represented as NH and then the highway number comes after it.
• The National Highway Network in India is supervised by the Ministry of State for surface transport.
• The public works departments of various states look after the state roads and state highways.

Expressways in India

• In 2009, in India, access-regulated expressways comprised around 120 miles or 200km of the National Highway System of the country.
• By 2011, these added to more than 600km. These roads allow high speeding vehicles and can be categorized into four-lane and six-lane expressways.
• The Indian government has outlined a motivated goal to construct a new 18,637km expressway transportation system by 2022.

State Highways in India

• The state highways are used to join with the National Highways, Major Towns, District headquarters, tourism hubs and small harbors and facilitate the movement of vehicles in important places of the state.
• These roads are essentially arterial roads and they facilitate accessibility to major metropolitan areas and townships in the state.
• In association with the state highways of the bordering states and national highways. The overall span of the state highways is around 137,712km.

Rural and Urban Roads

• The rural roads in India form a substantial portion of the Indian road network.
• These roads are in poor shape, affecting the rural population’s quality of life and Indian farmer’s ability to transfer produce to market post-harvest.
• Over 30 percent of Indian farmer’s harvest spoils post-harvest because of the poor infrastructure. Many rural roads are of poor quality.

Major District Rods

• These are important roads within a district connecting areas of production with markets and connecting these with each other or with the state highways & national highways.
• It also connects Taluk headquarters and rural areas to district headquarters within the state.
• District roads which would take traffic from the main roads to the interior of the district.
• According to the importance, some are considered as major district roads and the remaining as other district roads.