Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has criticised some of the surprisingly slow speed limits on multi-lane roads in the country. Gadkari believes that the speed limit on highways and expressways in India should be increased.
Speaking at a road safety virtual conference Way to Vision Zero, which is a collaboration between the governments of Sweden and India, Gadkari said that it is unfortunate when vehicles plying on multi-lane roads are penalised for breaching speed limit of a mere 40 kmph.
The Union Minister came out strongly in support of increasing speed limits, especially on multi-lane roads and sought state road administration to go easy on penalising vehicles for speeding.
On revising speed norms, Gadkari said, “I have already discussed this issue with my officials. We need to revise our speed norms considering the new roads being built, including expressways and Greenfield highways, widening of highways to four and six lanes.”
On the state of Indian roads and high number of accidents, Gadkari said that one of the reasons behind high accident rates in India is road engineering, road design. He said his ministry has identified such black spots, and has removed one thousand such spots to improve road conditions. Gadkari also assured that the Centre will help state governments to develop and maintain state highways.
The average speed of vehicles inside Indian cities normally is around 35 km/h, as per a study titled Mobility and Congestion in Urban India. The study, conducted across 154 cities in the country, claims that the average speed is one of the slowest in the world.
As per a Mint report last year, 10-km commute in Hyderabad takes 26 minutes on average. In Chennai and the national capital, it takes around 29 minutes while the same distance takes 34 minutes in Bengaluru, 37 in Mumbai and 39 minutes in Kolkata.
The average 10-km urban commute takes 24 minutes, as per a World Bank study that calculated commute times across 154 Indian cities. In Singapore and London, the 10-km commute takes an average of 21 minutes.
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