Government of India has planned to overhaul the existing structure of Indian Highways. Ministry of Road Transport and Highways have come out with an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to achieve the same.
In this SOP, the Transport Ministry announced that it will clearly mark the so-called chainage of these highways in order to rectify the 2010 numbering process. In 2010, almost 221 national highways were renumbered to build a systematic numbering scheme. It was done to bring in flexibility and integration of geographical orientation in the road network.
But the process left commuters more confused. It also created technical difficulties in the navigation because most of the highways continued to use both (new and old) or either number. In this regard, the SOP read, “Despite the passage of eight years following renumbering of the existing National Highways… the combination of old and new NHs numbers along the NHs are in use and in most of the cases the kilometer stone and marking along the NHs are still being done as per Old NH nos. This has been posing difficulties in identification of specific sections of NHs vis-à-vis new NH numbers; besides, this also poses difficulties in digitization/ geo-tagging of NHs, initiatives for which are also being taken up.”
According to new SOP, the ministry will place its marker at every 200 meters. The markers at 1-kilometer and 5-kilometer marks will be bigger in size. There is also mention of creating state-wise chainage for better updating and sharing of information. Chainage refers to marking of road positioning and its length across all geographical locations.
The Transport Ministry is also carrying the work of geo-tagging of all the National Highways so that it can integrate RFID FAST tags with distance-based tolling. The ministry has also announced to declare about 53,031 km length of State roads as new National Highways.