Caught in a perpetual jam

Country needs to end fragmented thinking on infrastructure projects

Alok Tiwari

It is instructive that nearly a quarter century after it was opened, the country’s first expressway experienced a massive 32–36-hour traffic jam early last week. The jam on Mumbai-Pune expressway was caused by an accident involving a tanker carrying 21 tonnes of highly flammable propylene gas. As the tanker overturned, the gas started leaking making it dangerous for any vehicle to pass near it. Stopping the traffic on the road was a sensible thing to do. What was neither sensible nor acceptable is the length and magnitude of the snarl it caused.

Vehicles backed up for 25-30 kms, drivers were stranded for hours on end, there was no way to supply them with food or water. The resultant disruption in lives can only be imagined. Many must have missed important meetings and family functions. Some might be having medical conditions. There would have undoubtedly been children and the elderly in many vehicles. Everyone that got stranded underwent trauma. It is fortunate that it did not result in any road rage incident.

Major accidents are expected to cause disruptions, and every possible scenario cannot be predicted. Yet the incident exposed the gaps in India’s infrastructure story. On the one hand, at least parts of infrastructure are developing rapidly. On the other, none of them seem to be delivering fully on the promise. The fact that more than two decades later, the country’s first expressway has no proper emergency management plan should bring this home.

Building highways and expressways is the centrepiece of government’s infrastructure push. Highways minister Nitin Gadkari has been justifiably lauded for this work. State governments across the country are also in a race to build expressways. Projects are announced through frontpage newspaper advertisements and often inaugurated by prime minister himself. But that is where the attention usually ends.

While several expressways and four-laned roads have been opened during the last decade, their management is far from satisfactory. The roads and their designs are world class but there is little else present to support the users. They are usually not equipped for even normal operations, let alone being capable of dealing with a disaster. A road is not just carriageway; it is supposed to be a complete traffic system. In India though, they are thrown open for use even when much of those supporting systems are not ready. A simple plan to deal with different types of emergencies is not drawn up, so there is no question of regular drills to ensure all involved know how to respond.

More than three years after its opening, Maharashtra’s second expressway, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg, still does not have basic facilities. Amenities centres that were supposed to come up every 50 kms are nowhere to be seen. A handful of fuel stations provide some snacks. There is no place for drivers and passengers to rest and no clean toilets. Hardly any facilities exist to provide help should a breakdown or an accident occurred. Government itself has expressed concern about high number of fatalities on the showpiece road. A modern traffic management system that would warn the drivers of blockages ahead and re-route them is only now being installed. Still, instead of finishing these first, the state has taken up building other expressways.

This is the story of most such roads elsewhere. There are regular pileups of vehicles on expressways of UP during fog season. There is virtually no mechanism to check rash driving or enforce lane discipline. The burden of dealing with emergencies falls on local police and health teams who are ill-equipped to deal with them. Since most of these roads are access-controlled, it is often not easy for relief teams outside to reach the spot quickly.

We tend to build the visible part of the project so the politician pushing it can claim credit. The supporting facilities are left for later. These expressways have undoubtedly sped up travel between cities but motorists land into same old chaos the moment they get off the expressway. Nor is this tendency limited to roads. In fact, it is an old habit being carried on to expressways now. We have had dams where the supporting canal network was not completed for decades.

Most of our very expensive metro systems remain under-utilized because the cities have not addressed the last-mile connectivity issue. We are building flyovers at breakneck speed, but this is not easing the traffic congestion. In many cases, they have contributed to increased congestion at either end and on roads underneath.

We are doubling, tripling, and in some cases quadrupling the railway lines. But this is being done in isolated manner, so the capacity of entire route does not increase. Indeed, in some cases, work on fourth line has commenced even when third line is yet to be completed. The result: thousands of crores are spent but bottlenecks persist. Vande Bharat train sets might be capable of running at 180kmph but thanks to old tracks they never go beyond 130kmph and most of the time do much less.

Many Inland Container Depots have been built across the country, but this has not meant fast movement of goods because of such bottlenecks. In some cases, the delays have increased despite them. After decades, one dedicated freight corridor has been completed another is nearing completion. But their full economic benefit is not being realized for want of connecting infrastructure.

It is time we stopped building expensive projects as showpieces. There is need to inculcate end-to-end thinking. Politicians will always demand more projects in their areas. There is also pressure to start work on them whenever elections are close. However, governments must resist the temptation to start new ones until the old ones are completed in all respects. Doing so would not only ensure more safety for citizens using them but will also result in their economic benefits accruing earlier.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Feb 12, 2026