In a shift in strategy, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is set to incorporate wayside amenities into the design of upcoming greenfield access-controlled highways, aiming to elevate the overall travel experience. As per the plan under discussion, these amenities could be used for landing drones, building helipads and to open retail outlets for selling local handicrafts and fresh farm produce.
NHAI is targeting 1,000 wayside amenities over the next five years–one at every 50 km along national highways–against 600 envisioned earlier in partnership with the private sector, a senior government official told ET. “Of these, 800 will be developed under the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode, wherein NHAI will provide the land and all requisite permissions along with supervision while the private player will be responsible for development, operation and maintenance of the facility for 15-30 years,” the official added.
Bigger facilities, spread over five acres or more, will be developed as highway villages while those having less than five acres will be developed as highway nests.
Traditionally, oil marketing companies (OMCs) have been providing basic wayside amenities at fuelling stations alongside highways across the country. With wayside amenities now becoming part of holistic planning of expressways, land acquisition for establishing such amenities will be done along with highways. Experts say the government will need to ensure scale of operations to ensure favourable response from private operators.
“However, the government will have to package and structure these in a manner that provides scale to the private sector to invest its time and money in the project while ensuring that the risk gets diversified,” said Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, senior director & global head, consulting, Crisil Market Intelligence and Analytics.
