Means Of Transport

1. Means of Land Transport
The transports which run on the land surface are called the means of land transport. They can be divided into two broad types : roadways and railways.

Roadways
It is easy to build roads in the plains, but difficult to build them on hills and in deserts. Thus, roads can be built just about anywhere. They play the important role as a means of transport. They are necessary even for other means of transport. For example, a railway station, seaport or airport needs to be linked to other places by road. Roads connect villages, towns, cities and countries. Their quality and breadth depend on the purpose for which they are used. A road can be kuchcha or pucca. A kuchcha road is a narrow, muddy road. Many of rural roads are kuchcha. On the other hand, a pucca road is metalled covered with tar or mortar.

In addition to the material used for building a road, its breadth also depends on its importance.

Rural roads are usually narrow or one-lane, while highways can have two or more lanes. In India, some expressways even have 16 lanes. On highways with multiple lanes for going and coming, the right lanes are for faster travel and the left lanes are for slower transports.
 
For a country to progress, a good network of roads is essential. However, with time, traffic has intensified, leading to the construction of flyovers, foot-over bridges, and subways to ease congestion. Flyovers are often built over railway crossings, road junctions, and busy markets, allowing for speedy and smooth traffic flow.

Highways:A highway normally connects major cities. It is an important, broad and long road. It can be state highway or national highway. A state highway connects the cities within a state while a national highway connects major cities of the country. Mostly a national highway has four or more lanes. Now, we can find highways having as many as 16 lane—eight for going and eight for coming. These are named differently in different places, like freeways, expressways etc.

International Highways:Mostly, highways connect cities within the country, but there are several major highways which connect different countries. The Pan-American Highway connects Alaska in North America to Chile in South America and the Burma China Road connects Burma with China.

There are some very long roads in the world; for example, the Trans-Canadian Highway stretches across Canada, from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east and the Australian Transcontinental Highway connects north of Australia to the south.

Roadways in India:India has a large network of roads. Right from narrow, kuchcha roads to the fine wide expressways, India’s road network is the second largest in the world. All towns and cities in India are connected by roads. Some of our roads connect India to its neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Bangladesh.

This road further goes to Afghanistan. The Indo-Tibet Road connects Tibet to India and further to China. We also have other roads connecting Bangladesh, Bhutan and Burma too.

The total length of Indian road network is over 43.20 lakh kilometres. It mainly consists of expressways (1,000 kilometres), national highways (79,243 kilometres) and state highways (1,31,899 kilometres). Other roads include district roads and rural roads. Here are some important roads in India:

• The Golden Quadrilateral is 5,846 km long, and connects the four major metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata.

• The East-West Corridor and North-South Corridor connect extreme parts of India.

• The NH-7 (Varanasi to Kanyakumari) is the longest highway in India with a total length of 4,572 kilometres.

• The best expressway is called the 95-km-long Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway.

Bandra-Worli Sea Link

Despite a large network of roads, India is struggling with increasing traffic, resulting in various problems such as pollution and accidents. Vehicle pollution contributes to breathing disorders, asthma, bronchitis, and sound pollution.
 

The level of pollution increases when vehicles are not well maintained. Increasing traffic on roads has led to reckless driving which causes accidents. Poor quality of roads is also responsible for many accidents. A very large number of people die or lose limbs in accidents every year.