VIJAYAWADA: Roads in Andhra Pradesh will be the best in the world in near future and to make it happen, foreign technology will be used, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said.
Inaugurating the multi-purpose high technology network survey vehicle -- Hawkya-2000 -- brought from Australia at his office here on Wednesday, he said a total 40,000 plus km of roads in the state will be surveyed and the roads identified as badly in need of repairs will be repaired with top priority using the latest technology.
Chief Minister, who traveled in the vehicle some distance and was shown how it functions, said sub-standard quality of road works and natural causes like heavy rains and loose soil are some of the important reasons for the road damage.
Speaking on the occasion, Australian Consulate General for South India Sean Kelly said Australian Road Research Board will take up survey of 20,000 km, to which CM said they want it to be 40,000 km and above. Kelly said latest technologies from Australia will be used for the road survey to get the best results. He pointed out that the largest number of road accidents in the world were happening in India and they want to do their bit to reduce them.
The survey would be carried out by ARRB’s joint venture company in India - the Indian Road Survey & Management Pvt Ltd (IRSM). The total cost of the project is Rs 20 crore and is expected to be completed by August 2016.
Meanwhile, addressing the Road Safety Workshop held at a private hotel in the city, Transport Minister Siddha Raghava Rao thanked the Australian Government and the Australian Trade Commission for launching an integrated road safety initiative in India. He said the State Government has taken road safety as its top priority and has come out with a road safety policy. “We want to reduce road accident fatalities by 15 percent (from the baseline figure of 2013) in the state by the year 2020,” he said.
He said they have identified 1,140 black spots and have already rectified 833 of them, due to which the road accidents have come down by 1.4 percent last year compared to same period in the previous year. He said they are shortly going to set up an Institute for Driver Training and Research at Venkatachalam village of Darsi mandal in Prakasam district at a cost of Rs 18.51 crore. The institute will train more than 1000 drivers every year, he said.