The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has directed the Chief Engineer (Road Safety) to create a policy for the implementation of smooth transition in lane configuration with adequate signages and warnings to reduce accidents.
According to an office memorandum issued on Wednesday, the ministry also said that road safety audits will be mandatorily conducted at every stage of project implementation – planning, preparation, designing, implementation, and operation.
“Post construction commercial operation shall be allowed only after road safety audit,” the memo, signed by Sudip Chaudhury Chief Engineer (Planning), said.
The Ministry also said in case of hazardous and accident-prone zones, the infrastructure will be developed with sufficient structures, like flyovers. It also said that MoRTH will roll out a policy for the same.
PM GatiShakti National Master Plan
The office memorandum was issued after the Minister of Commerce and Industry reviewed the status of implementation of PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (NMP) during a meeting on Monday.
Further, the Planning Zone of the Ministry was asked to coordinate with Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N), an autonomous scientific society, to identify the feasibility of road quality audits leveraging satellite imagery.
“Integrate NSV (Network Survey Vehicle) system and RAMS (Road Asset Management System Software) portal with PM GatiShakti National Master Plan for managing quality audit information on NMP portal,” it said.
The Planning Zone was also asked to make attribution on the NMP portal about the freight volume at toll plaza and number of passengers travelled per day at any toll plaza.
Focus on electrification of public transport vehicles
With an aim to promote electric mobility, MoRTH has asked its Transport Wing to identify the measures and policies required by the governments, both Centre and states, to expedite the electrification of public transport vehicles.
It also directed the Transport Wing to make a project profile, highlighting benefits, for the Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility (RVSF). This will be circulated to the states for alignment in support of the policy.
The memo also said that MoRTH will assess the feasibility of maximising the award of critical infrastructure gap projects including road connectivity for identified non-major ports as soon as possible.
“MoRTH to coordinate with stakeholders to identify the critical activities and support required from state government or port authority for non-major port projects across all the stages…” it added.
It also spoke about Automated Testing Stations (ATS), saying that the operations at ATS should be completely automated instead of manual testing, adding that a concept paper should be prepared by MoRTH to automate the end-to-end vehicle testing process along with an action plan for implementation.
The order also mentioned that these actions will be reviewed internally in the Ministry at the level of Secretary on a regular basis from now.
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