NHAI sets 3-month deadline to improve ‘look and feel’ of national highways

NEW DELHI: National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has identified over two dozen items for improvement over the next three months to enhance “look and feel” of national highways and improve commuters' experience. The exercise will focus on rectifying road defects, improving safety features, maintaining cleanliness and upgrading highway infrastructure.TOI has learnt that the authority has asked all its regional officers, project directors and highway contractors to focus on these areas. The identified measures include filling potholes, repairing cracked road surfaces, addressing visible rutting, restoring faded pavement markings and fixing damaged kerbs. NHAI has also flagged defunct highway lighting, damaged road signs and overhead sign structures, broken concrete barriers and faded paintwork for rectification.The authority will use dashcam footage to identify defects that need to be fixed. Other priorities include dressing uneven earthen shoulders, removing vegetation, ensuring proper median plantation, replacing missing drain covers and closing unauthorised openings in road medians. Unauthorised signboards, hoardings and encroachments will also be addressed.Work-zone safety and proper arrangements for traffic diversions are among the items identified for immediate attention.In addition, NHAI has proposed providing an adequate number of road studs, installing impact attenuators (crash cushions) at hazardous locations and adding gantries where required. The plan also covers improving the quality of toilets, painting foot overbridges and gantries, refurbishing bus bays and deploying road-sweeping and drain-cleaning machines.The authority has also identified toll plaza approaches, service roads, waterlogging, highway slopes and approaches to structures for improvement. Measures include better signage, road markings and landscaping near toll plazas, smoother riding surfaces and preventing water ponding.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.