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The Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Thiru T. R. Baalu launched here today the Vehicle Tracking Pilot Project to be executed on the Delhi-Jaipur Highway. This project is being executed by the Software Technologies Parks of India (STPI), a Government of India undertaking and M/s Core Projects and Technologies Ltd.
The Minister said that the project would be very useful for the vehicle owners and the drivers of the vehicles since the owners could track the vehicles every time and plan other movements accordingly. He said that the Vehicle break-down could also be known immediately and would enable the operators to take necessary action to rectify the fault. Shri Baalu further said that the system would prove to be useful especially in view of the fact that we were now entering the era when the highways were being 4/6 laned and expressways were being constructed.
Speaking on the road safety aspects, the Minister said that we could not remain content with mere mobility through high-speed highways and stressed that care has to be taken to provide a safe public-vehicle interface through service roads, railings, separators and underpasses. He said that education of road users and communities living by the roadside with regard to safety aspects could play an important role in making people safety-conscious.
The Minister said that the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) would be major plank of Government’s highways development programme. Private enterprise would bring in the money for development of the highways and would get returns through fees collected from the users, he said and added that the PPP was turning out to be a successful model for road development.
The Minister said that Government plans to spend about Rs.1,72,000 crore in the next seven years for a well-planned phase-by-phase development of National Highways. “Not contented with earlier highways development programme of only 14,000 kms out of the total National Highways network of 65,569 kms, our Government has decided to give a big boost to the development of National Highways”, the Minister added.
The Government has already approved the programme for the upgradation of 4,000 kms of National Highways on ‘Build-Operate-Transfer’ (BOT) basis under the NHDP Phase-IIIA and has also approved Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) preparation for another 6,000 kms under the NHDP Phase-IIIB, the Minister informed.
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