15 Interesting Facts About India’s National Highways
Everyone plans to go on a road trip in life and it seems adventurous. It leads to a perfect destination away from tedious life. Traveling by road seems perfect if wide highway roads are there to serve you. Highways, somehow take core part in our diaries, its memories, halt at dhabas, open sky, and breeze. Driving at high-speed on a smooth road is always fun.
Here are some interesting facts you should know about national highways of India:
1. Total length of Indian roads : After combining the national highways, expressways, rural, and district roads, the sum of the total length of road is 33 lakh km approximately.
2. Everyday 23 km of highway construction is done, as of June 2017.
3. There are more than 200 national highways in India and their total length is around 101,011 km. In addition, the total length of State highways is 1,31,899 km.
4. The national highways only constitute 1.8% of Indian roads and they control about 40% of the road traffic in India.
5. Majority of the national highways are two-lane roads and approx 22,900 km highways are of 4 to 6 lanes.
6. Numbering of highways : All the highways have specific numbers to identify them. The main highway is of 2-digit number and the secondary branch is a 3-digit number. Numbering are done in such a way that common person can identify to which branch belongs to whom.
For example: 144 number highway is a secondary branch to highway number 44. These are further broken into sub-divisions and named with a suffixed alphabet, like 144A, 244A, etc.
7. Rationalizing the highway numbering system in 2010 : It was quite difficult to differentiate which highway is going in which direction, hence the government decided to rationalize the number system of National highways in 2010. All the highways from north to south are even numbered digits, and from east to west in odd number digits.
8. Responsibility of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) : The National Highways Authority of India is responsible for building and maintenance of the national highway network. It comes under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. It was started by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Bajpayi.
9. About National Highways Development Project (NHDP) : National Highways Development Project (NHDP) is the largest highway project of India, which was launched under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Main aim of this project is highway upgrade and widen major highways.
10. You must have seen different milestones on your road trip. Have you wondered why they are of different colours? These milestones help in distinguishing city, state, and national highways. Yellow and white color is for national highways. Green and white for state highways.Black and white is for city highway.
11. NH 44 is the longest national highway with the length of 3,745 km. It runs between Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.
12. NH 118 along with NH 548 are the shortest national highway in India. NH 118 connects Asanbani and Jamshedpur in the state of Jharkhand and NH 548 is from Kalamboi in Maharashtra are the shortest national highway in India.
13. Longest cloverleaf interchange : Kathipara Junction or Kathipara’s Cloverleaf is the largest cloverleaf flyover in Asia. It is an important road junction in Chennai, Tamil Nadu
14. Leh-Manali Highway is the world’s second highest-altitude motor highway which connects Shimla in Himachal Pradesh to Leh in Jammu and Kashmir.
15. Liquor shops and bars are not allowed to run along any national highways of India.