FRONT PAGE | Thursday, December 11, 2008 | Email | Print | 
NH-8 safety project ends up as wrong number
Nidhi Sharma | New Delhi
It was a grand promise of safe travel on Indian highways — emergency telephones along Delhi-Jaipur highway connected with a high-tech round-the-clock control room. Seven years and over Rs 18 crore on, the promise has become yet another failed initiative of the Government.
A trip down NH-8 from Delhi to Jaipur is proof how National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) can completely get a good project wrong. Starting from Kotputli, NHAI had installed emergency telephones along an 86-km stretch on Delhi-Jaipur highway. Installed at every two kilometre interval, these bright orange telephone boxes were for any emergency, including accidents, inquiries about petrol stations and even route maps. The telephones were connected with a central control room at Shahpura.
All a person in distress had to do was open the box, press a button and speak to a person in the control room. The system, which became operational in December 2001 as part of NHAI’s highway traffic management system (HTMS), does not function any more. Try opening a phone box and pressing the button. Chances are that a passerby would stop and ask you what help you need.
As this correspondent travelled along NH-8 and tried the phone, motorists stopped, offered help and explained that the phones have not been functional over the last one year. Reason: They stopped functioning and NHAI could not get the parts replaced. The system was jointly designed and executed by Siemens India Ltd, ICN India, Siemens Traffic Control Systems, Munich, and Siemens Traffic Controls Ltd UK. It functioned properly for the first two years. Then the contract ended. The phones started giving way. NHAI employed a company Intertoll to fix it. It couldn’t make the phones work. The contract was terminated and given to another company.
The phones started working again in 2005 but within 20 days they conked off again. Shrawan Kumar, a former employee of Intertoll, said: “These phones need a special card. This expertise was not available with many companies. The phones have never functioned properly since 2005.”
The high-tech control room at Shahpura bears a deserted look. An optical fibre cable was laid along the road, connecting all the equipment along the route to the control room. The control room itself, besides having monitors, telephone communications and mobile radio systems, had a computerised set up for storage and management of all communications between the controllers and the callers. Now this high-tech system is lying absolutely abandoned. The employees at NHAI office in Shahpura, which houses the control room on the first floor, say that the entire system has not been working for the last two years.
When contacted, an NHAI spokesman confirmed: “The phones have not been working for the past few months.” There is, however, no assurance on whether these emergency telephones would work again or not. The spokesman said: “The work on six-laning of Delhi-Jaipur highway has to begin. The highway would be handed over to the private contractor. Whatever has to be done will be done by that company.”
There is no end to delays. The six-laning contract has been awarded to KMC-Pink
City Expressway Company. This private firm had to begin the six-laning process on December 3. NHAI officials at Shahpur control room told The Pioneer that this has been delayed at least till January. “There is no further communication about this from the company. But they hope to take over by early next year,” an official said.
This is not all. Just beyond Jaipur, the system is working fine. While NHAI could not set its house in order on Delhi-Jaipur stretch, a private contractor is making a similar emergency phone system work between Jaipur and Kishangarh. On this stretch the work has been awarded on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.
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