In A First, Rating Mechanism Formulated For National Highways, To Enhance Accountability Towards Motorists

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has released the ratings for 18,668 km of completed four and six lane stretches of National Highways covering 343 toll plazas.

This has been done by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under MoRTH, which has taken initiative to improve its accountability towards road users, who pay user fee to use National Highways.

This initiative has been taken as per vision of improving the quality of public services. The fundamental objective of highway rating is “Minimum time with maximum safety in a stress free environment” from highway users’ perspective, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.

Each toll plaza of highway is judged based on three major criteria which include efficiency, safety and user services. These criteria are further divided into a total of 39 parameters. These criteria were framed after detailed studies held in NHAI and MoRTH before its final approval.

No such criteria has been developed across the globe in the past which evaluates the performance of highways from the users’ perspective.

The Ministry has also begun real-time monitoring of toll plazas across the country. It is a simple help to solve traffic congestion problems at toll plazas, city roads, highways by using a central monitoring system along with a bundle of analytics and quick decision-making outputs.

This is likely to facilitate saving the commute time, improve customer experience, save fuel wastage cost and reduce carbon footprint. It uses several technologies like satellite imagery, GIS, remote sensing along with a proprietary algorithm to remotely monitor the congestion status of the roads.