Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday said that the Center will formulate a policy to know the condition and age of all bridges across the country.
He said that the Ministry has prepared the Indian Bridge Management System to collect the information of all the bridges in the country.
“In India, bridges have no expiry date and as a result, we have faced many accidents and deaths. I always tell people that financial audit is important but performance audit, quality construction audit is even more important,” Gadkari said.
Speaking at the release of the book “Building Bridges – Shaping the Future” authored by Satchidananda Joshi and Vaibhav Dange, the Union Minister said that the Center is looking at using stainless steel in the bridges being built along the sea. He said this would help in increasing the strength and longevity of the bridges as well as making them more secure.
Throwing light on new age technologies, Gadkari said that new technology will have to be adopted for connecting the spans of bridges.
“We have a 30m span in India. Malaysia has a span of 45m. This reduces the cost of the bridge by 30-40 per cent,” he said.
Gadkari stressed on multi-storey road projects.
“Land acquisition is difficult in cities. There is a need to build three- or four-storey roads in cities. A project has been made to run a metro on a two-storey road in Nagpur. Similarly, a four-storey road project in Pune,” the Union Minister said. he said.
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