(This story originally appeared in on Jul 31, 2017)

NEW DELHI: The present rate of vehicle growth will require construction of an additional lane on highways every year, which will cost government about Rs 50,000 crore, said road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari quoting a study done by his ministry."While we are expanding the highway network and increasing the length by converting more state highways to national highways the moot question is whether it's sustainable. We have to find solutions and graduate from building roads to improving mobility," Gadkari said citing how roads won't be enough unless the government finds ways to lessen use of private vehicles.At present, the annual increase in registration of vehicles is over 10%.For several years Indian policy-makers have been talking about the need to reduce the load of private vehicles on roads and to put in place mass rapid transit and robust public transport systems."We have to bring attractive public transport and other modes of shared transport system even on highway stretches, particularly between cities," Gadkari said adding that luxury double decker buses could be one such options.The study that Gadkari referred to has mentioned how a four-lane highway in Japan is adequate to manage 80,000 vehicles a day while in India a similar road stretch gets choked with only 20,000 vehicles."This simply shows how we need to make our roads efficient. But we can't achieve the performance at par with roads in Japan if all types of vehicles besides cycles and cycle-rickshaws use the same space," said an official.Considering this, the future expansion of highways will be based on making stretches access controlled so that slow moving traffic is not allowed to enter such stretches. "There will be service roads for the slow moving traffic. That will reduce congestion and road crashes as well," a ministry official said.The ministry has pushed the introduction of new technology driven transport systems, which are before the government think tank Niti Aayog.