June 28, 2013: India’s road building programme continues to be slow with less than 20km being added per day. However, this has not deterred the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways from taking a decision to use new materials and techniques in National Highway projects in the country on experimental basis.
The aim is to promote innovation and use of new technology in highway construction. In this regard, it has been decided to adopt innovative, new materials on at least one kilometre stretch in widening and strengthening projects.
The promoter of these new materials will be required to bear the extra cost involved in the proposal. Being the experimental projects, failure if any, of the trial reach, would not be treated as the responsibility of the Implementing and Executing Agencies, the ministry said in a press release.
The ministry says that this endeavour would result in saving of scarce natural resources like stone aggregates and bitumen. This may also result in saving in the lifecycle cost of road construction as compared to road construction using conventional materials. The use of latest equipment would also result in saving in construction period.
Road construction materials and technology has seen lot of improvements world over. Many new materials, techniques and equipments have been used in other countries successfully but the same needs to be tested under Indian conditions, traffic, rainfall, drainage, soil conditions etc. before being put to use in India.