Operational since February 1995, the Government of India has launched major initiatives to upgrade and strengthen national highways through various phases of the National Highways Development Project. National highways constitute just two per cent of the 3.3 million km Indian roads, world’s second largest road network but carry about 40% of the total road traffic.
National Highway Development Project (NHDP) Phase I was approved by Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in December 2000 at an estimated cost of र30,000 crore and comprised mostly of Golden Quadrangle (5,846km) and NS-EW Corridor (981km), port connectivity (356km) and others (315km). So far seven phases have been approved for the development of highways.
Guidelines for maintenance
NHAI has laid down guidelines for the requisite maintenance to be followed by the concessionaires who have bagged the projects. Some of the concessionaires are Reliance, L&T,HCC, GMR, Gamman India Ltd, IRCON International Ltd, KMC constructions among others.
For routine maintenance work the concessionaire shall follow the operations and performance criteria specified in the respective IRC/MoRTH standards and specifications conforming to the International Standards for the sound Pavement maintenance practices. More specifically, the responsibilities of the concessionaires inculde:
- Ensuring smooth and uninterrupted flow of traffic during normal operating conditions;
- Charging, collecting and appropriating Fee in accordance with the Fee Notification and this Agreement;
- Minimizing disruption to traffic in the event of accidents orother incidents affecting the safety and use of the Project/Project Facility by providing a rapid and effective response and for this purpose maintaining liaison with emergency services;
- Undertaking routine maintenance, including prompt repairsof potholes, cracks, concrete joints, drains, line marking,lighting and signage; Ensuring that a minimum two lanes should remain open for uninterrupted, smooth and safe traffic flow at ease during such time.
- Undertaking maintenance works in accordance with Maintenance Manual and the Maintenance Programme;Keeping the project site/facilities in a clean, tidy and orderly condition, free of litter and debris and taking all and practical measures to prevent damage to the project facility or taking care of road furniture.
The concessionaires are also expected to prevent unauthorised entry & exit from the Project, and encroachments. Adherence to the Safety Standards is also their responsibility.
All materials used in the maintenance, repair and replacement of any of the project facilities should meet the design requirement and conform to the environment norms.
The highways pass through urban, semi-urban and rural areas. Says, Sumeet khurana, MD-Dulevo India.“It is practically impossible to do manual cleaning in these long stretching roads. And even if one resorts to manual cleaning,keeping the quality of the job would be short of expectations. Further, it will require a concentrated force of labour to get this work done.”
Mechanised sweeping, as conceded upon by the concessionaire and NHAI, provides the possibility of quickly cleaning the long stretches of road more efficiently.
“Economically, using mechanised sweeping equipment will bring down the cost of cleaning the roads.” Accordingly to the NHAI guidelines, the frequency of cleaning highways is as follows:
- it’s an urban road it has to be swept once in two days.
- if it’s a rural road it can be swept twice in a week.
Elaborating further, BR Srikanth, Vice President, GMR, the concessionaire to highways running along the major cities including Delhi, MP, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, says, “We have general level of cleanliness schedules for urban roads, semi-urban roads and rural roads. The cleanliness level required for urban roads is more than that for semi-urban roads which are less frequented.” Adds Khurana: “Normally these road stretches are more or less in 50-150km category.The size of the equipment depends on the area to be covered.The size varies according to the road stretch of 50m, 100km and more than 100km.”
Currently, four projects of GMR are under construction ofmanufacturer which one project has been completed and is operational on the 33km stretch between Chandigarh and Ambala. “We’ve small machine in this stretch and it will clean 5-6 kilometre everyday.Currently we are using the Dulevo 120 for Chandigarh-Ambala.We are still new to this modern mechanical cleaning and willtake some time before we get experienced. We will be using Dulevo 200 for the other highways,” said Srikanth of GMR.
“We will require three more machines for our other three other projects: Tindivanam-Ulunderpeth (72 km), Hyderabad-Nagpur road (101km) and Hyderabad-Bangalore road (60km).Most of these highways run on very small portion of urban stretch and more along the rural stretch. Thus the frequency cleaning will be much less,” added Srikanth.
The Dulevo machine deployed on the sloping roads clean the dust that gathers in the two edges of the shoulder of the roads. Apart from cleaning the concessionaire also ensures incident management where dead animals lying on the road have to be cleared. “Along with the sub-contractor, we regularly go forpatrolling and clear the carcass using the thrash vehicle.Cutting of grass on the median or on the side of the road and maintain landscape near the toll plaza are other areas of responsibility.
At present seven of Dulevo 200 Quattro are operational in The Bangalore-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Nagpur and Chennai-Bangalore, Panipat and Chandigarh-Ambala highways.Generally, a machine is put into action soon after the road is ready and much before the toll or traffic has started. Once the road is ready it has to be clear and cleaned.
Besides sweeping , the machine also effectively collects bigger particles of debris for e.g.: brick or certain construction materiasl. This ‘mechanical suction machine’ are ideal for bigger roads where there couldbe bigger things lying around and need to be picked up mechanically. This is a phase I activity. Once the road becomes operational for traffic, all the standard NHAI guidelines come in to force and the concessionaires have to follow the process in terms of frequency. So at this point the activity moves to day-to-day maintenance to keep the road clean.
The concessionaire may decide to buy the equipment oroutsource the cleaning to a service provider.
“Our mechanical + suction equipment can effectively remove big and small things from the road,” says Khurana. “If the road stretches to say 200km, we are talking about cleaning four sites. We’ve to choose the equipment that can manage to sweep 8-10 km per hour. So, if the machine has to sweep 70km, then it would need seven-eight working hours.
“We analyse how dirty the road tends to get. For eg: we’ve a road to clean at Rajasthan where there is dust storm. We find more sand than dust on the road on a regular basis. Thus we’ve to decide on the size of the hopper of the machine based on how much dust we’ve to collect in a given time.
“If there is too much of dust, the hopper will fill quickly. In that case, we’ve to see how to discharge what we are collecting. So, we need to have discharge point constructed by the concessionaire where we can dump all the collected dust or we’ve to make alternative arrangement which could be a tractor trolley that can collect all the dump and we can continue withour sweeping work. If I’m an equipment supplier I don’t have to provide the tractor trolley and if I am a service provider I have to arrange for one.But ultimately the concessionaire has to decide where we’ve to go and dump the dust.
“When compared to normal roads, it is faster to clean national highways. Normal city roads tend to be dirtier as you may find all kind of things on the road while on the national highway there is generally a lot of dust. Many people opt to clean at night because the traffic is less and one can fairly sweep faster, not causing much obstacle to vehicles.”
“However, working by night is challenging,” says Harikumar Selvaraj, VP-Large System Division, Kam-Avida Enviro Engineers Pvt. Ltd, adding that “people are not disciplined to follow traffic rules and though while cleaning safety norms are stringently followed, there are chances of accidents taking place.”
Kam-Avida’s Kamsweep 5LCH sweeping machine is operating on various highways, including airport link road from (Devenahalli) Bangalore airport to the city, Hyderabad highway road, Delhi-Gurgoan highway and Chennai-Dindivanam highway. These highways come on both rural as well as urban areas. Normally cleaning is done by night.
“We’ve a schedule for cleaning. Two-three helpers accompanying the sweeper begin working around 8 or 9 in the evening. On the way, if they find carcass or any other object it is removed manually,” adds Hari.
“We supply the cleaning machines to the contractors and in few cases we’ve taken up the total project on a turnkey basis and we also have our own contractor to do this work.”
The average speed of the chassis mounted road sweeper Kamsweep is 5-7km per hour covering a stretch of at least 40-50km. “Depending on the length of the highway, we also have two machines running in Pune and Hyderabad stretches whereas in Bangalore we’ve one machine. Usually, if the highway is around 100km two machines are deployed. We analyse the requirement, do a survey and submit a report initially to the concessionaire, based on which we decide how many machines is required.”
Khurana believes that the sweeping machines “have to be such that they work well in the Indian conditions:
- They should be able to remove the debris
- They should be able to remove the dust through an effective filtration system
- They should be capable of working without water because water is preciousre resource and you may be working in a stretch of road where you may not find water.
Dulevo, with mechanical suction, is able to effectively perform all the above aspects in the India conditions.”
Maintenance of highways is not just restricted to road sweeping, explains a L&T spokesperson. “It includes road furniture, guard rails, kilometre stone, delineators and reflectors, gantries and signages. It also deals with the maintenance of the right of way, which is basically sprinkled with avenue plantation and turfing at times. There is toll pitching done on high embankments and likewise every aspect of facility- buildings and electronic equipment installed on the roads like VMSes and highway traffic management system componentshas to be maintained.”
L&T has set up its own highway maintenance system implemented on the stretches, including 76km Palanpur Swaroopganj highway, Farukhanagar-Kotakatta (NS-2/AP-4), Vadodara-Bharuch Package and Chennai-Tada and others. Some of the critical worare undertaken by L&T’s specialist teams and some other activities are outsourced.
In today’s context there aren’t many companies available to provide cleaning services, especially on stretches located in the middle of nowhere, says the spokesman. Neither are there agencies coming forward to provide cleaning equipment on a monthly basis or on a contractual basis. “We are thus planning to invest incleaning equipment and put our own team to do the cleaning.
“We’ve one road-sweeper running on the Panipat project. In highway scenario, many don’t know understand what needs to be cleaned because if you are going on a carriage way, if you’ve a soft shoulder on the left side, you land up cleaning only one edge, the median edge. If it is paved shoulder on the left hand side as well, then you end up cleaning both the two edges on a carriage way. Since it is a divided carriage way, you would be cleaning four edges. So the frequency of cleaning is purely dependent on the area of operation. If it’s urban then you need to clean more frequently and if it is rural area then you end up cleaning less frequently.”