To upgrade rural infrastructure, the Government has formulated a proposal for providing the road connections to more than 38,484 villages above 1000 population and all 20,867 habitations above 500 populations in hilly and tribal areas .
The main thrust of research and development (R&D) in the roads sector is to build a sustainable road infrastructure comparable to the best roads in the world. The various components of this strategy are improvement in design, modernization of construction techniques, introduction of improved material conforming to latest trends, evolving better and appropriate specifications, encouraging development and use of new technologies etc. The areas covered are roads, road transport, bridges, traffic and transportation techniques etc. The Department takes the help of various research institutions, academic institutions and universities to implement the schemes. An outlay of Rs.600.00 lakhs has been provided for R&D in 2007-08. Some of the ongoing major schemes are as follows:
Roads:
Development of GIS based National Highways information system;
Guidelines for soil nailing techniques in highway engineering;
Pilot study on effect of overloading on road infrastructure;
Investigation on field performance of bituminous mixes with modified binders;
R&D Studies on performance evaluation of rigid pavements on high density traffic corridors using instrumentation supported by laboratory tests.
Participants