Soon, you may be able to zip along highways across India at 120 kmph

india

Updated: Jun 22, 2017 07:28 IST

If road transport minister Nitin Gadkari has his way, the speed limit on highways and expressways in India could increase up to 120 kilometres per hour.

Currently, only the 165 km Yamuna Expressway connecting Delhi to Agra has a 100 km per hour speed limit. All national highways (NHs) across the country have a speed limit of 80 km per hour.

At a recent review meeting, Gadkari told officials the ministry should consider increasing the speed limit on highways to 100 km per hour and on the upcoming new access controlled expressways to 120 km per hour.

“The minister said that with the quality of highways improving and better quality of automobiles being manufactured, it is time that the speed cap on our highways is increased. We are in the process of making a formal proposal,” said a highways ministry official.

The ministry will soon set up a committee of experts to deliberate on the issue.

The government has already planned to build 1,000 km of access-controlled expressways. Work has started on some stretches, such as Delhi-Meerut and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway.

Many states in the United States such as Texas have a speed limit of 137 km per hour.

The average speed limit on autobahn, the access controlled highway system in Germany, is 142 km per hour. In some stretches of autobahn, there is no speed limit for some classes of vehicles. But in India, increasing the speed limit is not going to be easy.

However, Gadkari’s plan has not gone down well with road safety experts who are piqued at the poor safety standards on roads that witness the highest road accident deaths in the world. In 2015, five lakh road accidents and were reported in India. Speeding accounted for 44% of road accident deaths.