Gunjan Pradhan Sinha NEW DELHI LONG drives would be a taxing exercise soon. The government is planning to develop all future highways through build, operate and transfer (BOT) model that would necessarily have toll component. Private companies would be awarded road projects on BOT basis and they would charge a toll fee from commuters to recover their investments. About 50,000 km of roads are expected to be developed under various phases of the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) including new expressways, rail-overbridges, canal bridges, roads and highways. A 100% funding by the government will be made only for such projects where no private firms are willing to invest due to low traffic flow. "On low-traffic areas we would award projects on contractual basis. But given the increased volume of traffic throughout the country, which is far more than the expected rise of 5%, almost all stretches would be able to attract private investments,' a senior government official said. Road traffic went up by over 8-10% in 2007-08 against government estimates of 5%. The situation is expected to remain the same over the next few years due to the demand-supply situation for road services. "The rate at which traffic is growing on roads, most stretches are financially viable. For those which are not, there is 40% viability gap funding. This makes BOT model attractive. However, state highways development may have to follow the annuity model,' Feedback Ventures managing director (engineering and project management division) Parvesh Minocha said. Several expressways and highways are expected to be developed in the next five years. Interestingly, most of them would be spillover of the 10th Plan. For example, in phase III of NHDP, over 9,000 km stretches are yet to be awarded for four and six-laning. Another 5,000 km for development are expected to be awarded in NHDP-IV. The estimated investment for entire phase III is about Rs 80,000 crore, while that for phase IV is about Rs 27,000 crore. In addition, another 5,000 km have been marked out for two-laning under the first phase of NHDP-IV. About 3,000 km of roads are yet to awarded under NHDP-V, a length of 16,000 km each is slated for phase VI and VII of the NHDP which includes 1,000 km of expressways.