India Aims to Construct Helipads and Drone Hubs in Motorway Rest Areas

A num­ber of Indi­an media out­lets have recent­ly report­ed that Nitin Gad­kari, India’s Min­is­ter for Road Trans­port and High­ways, has announced that the gov­ern­ment is look­ing to con­struct heli­pads and drone hubs along­side some of the 600 Way­side Ameni­ty loca­tions being planned for its Nation­al high­ways.

For exam­ple, livemint.com report­ed, “Apart from basic facil­i­ties like good toi­lets, park­ing and restau­rants, these way­side ameni­ties (WSAs) will also have dor­mi­to­ries for truck dri­vers, charg­ing sta­tions for elec­tric vehi­cles and even trau­ma cen­tres.”

The media out­let goes on, “More­over, the Min­is­ter com­ment­ed there will also be retail out­lets for pro­mot­ing hand­i­crafts and local­ly-man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts, with some of the WSAs hav­ing heli­pads and drone hubs to deal with med­ical emer­gen­cies like road acci­dents and organ trans­plan­ta­tion.”

Nitin Gad­kari

The con­struc­tion of Nation­al High­ways (NH) in 2022–23 was 10,331 km, falling 21 per­cent short of the government’s tar­get of 12,500 km, accord­ing to the Min­istry of Road Trans­port and High­ways’ lat­est data. The WSAs are part of India’s major infra­struc­ture pro­gram under the title Bharat­mala Pariy­o­jana, to devel­op close to 35,000 km of Nation­al High­way cor­ri­dors, con­nect­ing over 580 dis­tricts around the coun­try.

On top of this, Bharat­mala 2 is the Indi­an gov­ern­men­t’s ambi­tious project of build­ing more than 5,000 km of express­ways and high­ways at the cost of almost Rs 3 tril­lion. Gad­kari recent­ly stat­ed, “Indi­a’s high­ways will be on par with that of the US by 2024.” This is where the heli­pads and drone hubs are planned to be built.

The new road infra­struc­ture is all part of Indi­a’s Prime Min­is­ter, Gati Shak­ti, and his Nation­al Mas­ter Plan, to reduce logis­tics costs around the coun­try. yourstory.com explained “These costs in India are high­er at 13–14 per­cent of GDP com­pared to 8–9 per­cent in oth­er devel­oped economies such as the U.S.”

The out­let con­tin­ued, “Reduc­ing logis­tics costs to 9 per­cent of GDP is at the top of the gov­ern­men­t’s agen­da, where a strong, sta­ble, deci­sive and trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment is the key to achiev­ing the coun­try’s tar­get of becom­ing a USD5 tril­lion econ­o­my by 2025.”

(Top image: Aer­i­al view of Nation­al High­way num­ber 44 con­nect­ing Ben­galu­ru and Hyder­abad, at Dev­asthanada­hosa­hal­li, Kar­nata­ka, India. Cred­it: Shut­ter­stock)