Govt maps sustainable route to highway building: Gadkari
Mint Sustainability Summit 2023 in New Delhi on 23 August, the minister said the government has been pushing for sustainable construction of roads and highways in a bid to protect the ecology, and not just for the transition to green mobility. Outlining the achievements of the NDA government, he said that the country has added around 86,000 km to its national highway network since 2014. The minister added that currently the national highway network of India is the second largest in the world at over 1.46 lakh km, after the US.
Gadkari mentioned that the government has adopted the use of fly ash, rubberized bitumen, polymer-modified bitumen and steel slack in the construction of roads in the country. Further, as part of the Green Highway Policy 2015, he said a total of about 3.8 crore trees have been planted so far along the national highways. “Now we are going to develop a special contractor for transplantation of trees and that is very important for protecting our ecology and environment," the minister said.
The road transport minister reiterated his stand for the use of ethanol, methanol, bio-diesel and bio-CNG for mobility in his address. In a bid to lower fatalities, he mentioned the initiative to use bamboo crash barriers along highways. “For the first time in the world, we have installed bamboo crash barriers on a 200-metre-long section on Vani-Warora (highway), in Maharashtra.
It passed all the trials and tests taken by the institute in Indore." The highway connects the Chandrapur and Yavatmal districts in Maharashtra. He was of the view that the use of bamboo also offers an alternative to steel and addresses environmental concerns. On the policy to mandate minimum use of 25% precast components in national
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