Soon after the Central government decided to undertake performance assessment and ranking of the highways in the country as a part of the efforts to improve quality of roads, massive landslide cut off the Imphal-Tamenglong road in Kangpokpi district of Manipur that connects National Highway-39.
Locals in the area said the heavy landslide occurred on Monday caused by incessant rains in the region for the past few days. Only recently torrential rains caused heavy landslides that cut off the Imphal-Jiribam road and the Tamenglong-Imphal road at Kotlen. The massive damage to the roads caused great difficulty to the movement of returnees and COVID-19 frontline workers in Tamenglong district. The roads have been restored for now.
The Monday landslide took place soon after the Road, Transport and Highways Ministry stated in a release that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the ministry has decided to undertake performance assessment and ranking of the highways in the country. The assessment audit and ranking of the NHs is aimed to take corrective recourse, wherever needed, to improve the quality and provide higher level of service to highway commuters, the ministry stated in the release.
The assessment parameters are based on different international practices and studies for benchmarking highway performances in Indian context. The criteria for the assessment have been broadly categorised in three main heads: Highway Efficiency (45%), Highway Safety (35%) and User Services (20%). On the basis of outcome of the assessment, the authority will undertake a comprehensive analysis and decide on the level of intervention required to enhance the overall service quality.
Additionally, important parameters like operating speed, access control, time taken at toll plaza, road signages, road markings, accident rate, incident response time, crash barriers, illumination, availability of Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), functionality of structures, provision for grade separated intersections, cleanliness, plantation, wayside amenities and customer satisfaction will also be considered while conducting the assessment.
The score obtained by each corridor in each of the parameter will provide a feedback and corrective recourse for higher standards of operation, better safety and user experience to improve existing highways. This will also help in identifying and filling gaps of design, standards, practices, guidelines and contract agreements for other NHAI projects.
The ranking of the corridors will be dynamic and the concessionaire/ contractor/ operator will get the opportunity to improve upon their ranking by improving the services on that corridor. Apart from overall ranking of all the corridors, separate ranking for BOT, HAM and EPC projects will also be done. This process of ranking will bring out operational efficiency and ensure high quality maintenance of roads.
