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Rural road in India

Uttar Pradesh is home to over 200 million people. With many of those living in rural areas and industrial centres spread throughout the state, its road network is crucial to the economy.

Ravi Venkat Peri, principal transport specialist at the ADB, said that improving the state’s roads was therefore essential to giving its communities better access to markets and basic social services.

Substantial sections of the state’s roads are poorly surfaced or too thin, meaning bottlenecks and accidents are common.

India has among the highest number of annual road fatalities in the world, and there were 17,666 in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 – the highest in the whole country.

The project, which will be co-financed by the state government to the tune of $128m, will see 430km of major roads upgraded, fitted with safety features and benefit from regular maintenance to ensure they are well kept.

This forms part of the state government’s plan to develop core roads throughout Uttar Pradesh, improving their quality, safety, sustainability and management.

India’s national government has pledged to reduce road fatalities throughout the country by 50% by 2020, but road fatalities still on the rise increasing by 5% last year to around 400 deaths every day.