Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has asked officials to consider every national and State highway as standalone projects for maintenance. A knowledge partner needs to be appointed in this regard.
Andhra Pradesh has a network of 41,296 km of State roads and 6,000 km length of national highways.
These roads have to be connected. He directed officials to chalk out plans in that direction, and utilise the services of DWCRA groups.
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Mr. Naidu held a review meeting on the Roads and Buildings (R&B) Department at the Secretariat near here Wednesday.
He also reviewed the working of the computerised Road Management System for the State highways and major district roads.
The officials informed him that the Central government has sanctioned ₹3,370.93 crore under the Central Road Fund (CFRF) to the State. The government has already launched 132 works.
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The Centre has released₹ 1,690.60 crore.
Besides this, ₹896.37 crore was released for works relating to Vizianagaram Bypass, NH-340 (Rayachoti-Angallu) and NH-75 (Mangalore-Tiruvanamalai).
Funds released for
RoBs and RuBs
Another ₹783.96 crores was released for railway road over bridges and road under bridges works.
The officials also told him that a pilot study was conducted on 40 roads in Prakasam district to understand the network condition of State highways.
A number of distresses such as potholes, edge break, crack, ravelling, longitudinal cracks and rutting were found and treatments were suggested to address them.
The overall average network quality of the 1,257.66 km surveyed was understood to be poor and not up to International Roughness Index (IRI) standards.
The Chief Minister suggested that the construction and maintenance of all the roads be brought under the purview of the Road Development Corporation. If need be, the corporation can borrow funds, he said.
R&B Minister Ch. Ayyannapatrudu, Principal Secretary (R&B) Sumita Dawra and Finance Secretary Ravichandra were among those present.