- The Indian Road Congress created this strategy at the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ request.
- The primary road system, which consists of expressways and national highways, and the secondary road system, which consists of state highways and important district roads, are both covered by this road document.
- It has taken into account the requirement for the country’s overall road system development.
Salient Features of Fourth Twenty Year Road Development Plan:
- The Road Development Plan Vision: 2021, which was created with the full participation of the highway profession in both the public and private sectors, expresses the intention for highway development in the 20 years starting in 2001.
- This vision addressed issues such as the need to mobilise financial resources, including the expansion of the road fund, toll financing, private sector participation, capacity expansion of main highways, pavement strengthening to handle the movement of heavy commercial vehicles, undertaking a massive programme of village road construction, and preservation of existing road assets.
- Needs for road construction in the North Eastern region and other remote places have received specific attention in the aforementioned document.
- Using the most cutting-edge and sophisticated tools for building roads was given priority.
- The importance of research and development efforts in the road sector has increased.
- Priority was placed on improving road safety through various engineering techniques.
- More focus should be paid to engineer training.
- Providing complete connectivity to all habitations, including the construction of bridges and culverts, must be the goal. The following concept for new connectivity has been suggested as a result.
- Habitations with populations above 1000 by the year 2009–10 (or 500 in the case of hills, NE states, deserts, and tribal areas) and above 500 by the year 2014–15 (or 250 in the case of hills, NE states, deserts, and tribal territories) Communities with a population of more than 250 by 2021–2022.
The following list provides the country’s 2020 primary and secondary road system total target lengths:
a. The main highway network
- 15,766 km of expressways (Target length)
- 80,000 km (target length) of national highways; 57,700 km (Achieved length)
b. Secondary road network:
- 1,60,000 km (target length) of State Highways; 1,24,300 km (Achieved length)
- 3,20,000 km (target length) of major district roads; 29,94,000 km (Achieved length)
- Other District Roads and Village Roads: 29,94,000 km (achieved length), no objective set.
