The government plans to roll out at least 85,000 buses in rural areas in the next five years in its bid to improve public transport. This is likely to improve the availability of public transport across the states and help shift people to buses from personal vehicles. A concept paper prepared by the road transport and highways ministry, which was presented at a recent meeting of state transport secretaries, has proposed such a move besides increasing the number of driving training institutes and inspection centre for vehicles.

Itanagar : The Union Road Transport and National Highways ministry has approved the 407 km Putin-Pangin road which passes through three districts of Arunachal Pradesh.

The road, part of the ambitious Trans-Arunachal Highway (TAH), which will touch Ziro, Daporijo and Aalo was approved by Union Road Transport & National Highways Minister C P Joshi yesterday, Lok Sabha member from Arunachal Takam Sanjoy said in a statement on Thrusday.

People Veering Towards Own Wheels Due To Inadequate Public Transport
New Delhi: More than 95% of vehicles registered every year in India are private ones, government data reveals. For instance, at least 1.76 crore private vehicles — cars, jeeps, auto-rickshaws and two-wheelers — were registered in 2010, and the growth was sharp between 2007 and 2010, aggregating up to 5.37 crore.

Several important State highways (SH), including the busy Bangalore-Mysore and Kodagu-Mangalore routes, will soon become National Highways (NH), if the State Government has its way.

The State Public Works Department (PWD) has recently proposed to the Centre to declare 21 SHs as NHs, covering 4,031 km. If the Union Ministry of Road Transport accepts the State’s proposal, then the total length of NH in the State will almost double. Presently, the State has 15 NHs covering 4,490 km.

SHILLONG: If the utterances of Chief Minister Mukul Sangma is taken for granted, the Jorabat-Umiam four-lane road project and the Shillong by-pass from Umiam to Mawryngkneng is expected to be completed by 2013. These two projects, particularly the Shillong by-pass was way behind the scheduled period of completion due to one reason or the other.

Notwithstanding the delay, the Chief Minister told newsmen on Monday after a meeting with the top officials of the National Highway Authorities of India (NHAI) that they have agreed to execute the twin projects expeditiously.

New Delhi: To complete the already delayed north-south corridor, the highways ministry will now seek additional budgetary support of Rs 10,340 crore for two four-laning projects in Jammu and Kashmir. The National Highways Authority of India has already used more than the sanctioned budget support of Rs 26,599 crore in four projects, which was actually meant for developing six national highway corridors in the state.

Alarm bells have started ringing in the government over recent trend of highway builders quoting huge premiums to bag contracts. Road transport and highways minister CP Joshi has directed his officials to do a risk analysis of such bids and devise a mechanism to secure the completion of projects. Essentially, the minister’s fear is that bidders, in their enthusiasm to grab projects, might be over-estimating the lucrativeness of these projects and if their calculations go awry, the projects could get stalled.

New Delhi: UPA-2’s target to build 7,000km of roads a year may be a reality soon, as the next two years are likely to record 20,000km of road construction, given the projects awarded so far. Construction is in progress on 16,000km, and the ministry has to award 11,050km in the current fiscal.

SHILLONG: The decision of the state government to go ahead with the construction of the four lane from the existing road at Umsning has called for both applause and criticism from the local residents of Umsning.

Minister of shipping GK Vasan announced that the union shipping ministry would regulate the movements of ships that are more than 25 years old, in Mumbai on Saturday.