The road network is pivotal for moving goods and people across the hinterlands in Nepal, more so because the landlocked country lacks water transport and has a limited stretch of railways. The United States Congressional Research Service defines infrastructure as “physical networks (systems and facilities) that provide functions and services to the community”. It further says that the codes related to transportation, energy, communications and water infrastructures ensure “the safe operation of and uninterrupted services, as well as resiliency, efficiency, environmental protection, and other aspects of infrastructure performance.”

Nepal has the lowest road density in the world, with 47 km of road per 100 square km and 2.5 km of road per 1,000 people. Even more critical is the “performance” of the existing road infrastructure. One key bottleneck is road service efficiency in terms of travel time, passenger comfort and value for money.

Always under construction

These days, it takes at least 10 hours to cover the 200 km distance from the national capital, Kathmandu, to the recently declared tourism capital, Pokhara. The 114-km Narayangadh-Butwal section of the East-West highway takes five hours of travel. An hour is the minimum bet to cover a 15-km length of the Suryabinayak-Dhulikhel section of the Arniko highway. The authorities’ excuses are simple: These roads are under improvement/expansion! But, literally for years?

Along the Kathmandu-Pokhara road, an underpass Nagdhunga tunnel is under construction at the western outlet from the Kathmandu valley, with simultaneous expansion of the Nagdhunga-Naubise road for the last two years. On the other stretch, the Mugling-Pokhara road expansion has been underway for the last three years. The Narayangadh-Butwal road expansion should have been completed by now, but only 38 percent of the work has reportedly been completed in the contract period of the last three years.

These are only a few glaring examples. Generally speaking, it has become impossible to imagine travelling even a two-km stretch of road anywhere in the country without a pothole, unexpected bumps or even a disfigured fresh blacktop. As such, the principle of “uninterrupted service” while major highways go for expansion or renovation is blatantly compromised across the entire policy space, at a massive cost burden on the national economy and people's social lives.

Chronic underinvestment and poor management of road systems, coupled with the absence of a comprehensive code to regulate road development, repair, expansion, and improvement, have become hindrances to commuters' and transporters' rights to safe and efficient travel.

Regulatory framework

What is lacking strikingly is the mandatory provision for unhindered and uncompromised movement of vehicles to be complied with by the contracting parties while repairing and expanding the key highways. While developing the detailed project reports, the cost is invariably added to make arrangements for appropriate diversions or alternative routes where quality and time are comparable to the original roads. However, to save this cost, the contractors force the vehicles to ply through dugout roads and the regulators turn a blind eye to the plight of millions of travellers in obvious vested interests.

The Department of Roads is the pivotal central agency governing the roads. Also in existence is the Road Board Nepal, with a repair and maintenance mandate. The main guiding law for the sector is the Public Roads Act 1974. Section 14(b) of the Act implicitly conceives the idea of building “a separate road of a temporary kind as required to continue the traffic or movement”, but it fails to make it unequivocally mandatory for the parties involved in the construction to ensure uninterrupted and timely flow of traffic.

After restructuring the state, several provinces have replicated the same Act but without much improvement given the increasing public nuisance created by the roughness of roads “under construction” for years.

Coordination missing

Another shade of regulatory failure is evident in the absolute lack of coordination among the government entities responsible for providing public utilities. They are competing in flouting the laws. Section 29 of the same Act states, “If any office of the Government of Nepal has to dig a public road or road border for any work, it has to dig by obtaining approval of the Department of Roads, and such an office has also to observe the method (norms) or terms, if any, prescribed by the Department of Roads in relation to so digging the road or road border”.

Similarly, Section 20 states that in the case of a person, “the Department of Roads… may give permission by taking a deposit of the expenses that may be incurred in maintaining and restoring into its original form of the public road or road border to be so dug or demolished”. But the provision falls short of a similar degree of requirement with regard to state-owned enterprises.

Implications

These provisions, though, are barely followed. For instance, the city roads indiscriminately dug by the Melamchi Water Supply Project are never properly restored. Adding to this is the Nepal Electricity Authority, currently digging the roads to lay the 1,147-km underground cable in the Kathmandu Valley for electricity supply. In addition to unexpected traffic congestion due to unplanned and haphazard work, the roads dug by the Authority are far from repaired. Worst, the Department of Roads and the Authority are at loggerheads on non-cooperation allegations in each other’s works.

The economic and social costs of such neglect, both direct and indirect, are massive. Time and cost overrun in almost every major road project add a multi-fold burden on the national exchequer. The repair and maintenance cost of the vehicles plying on these roads rises exponentially. The added fuel consumption and pollution from fumes and dust incessantly for years have taken a heavy toll on public health, particularly along the construction sites.

The prolonged construction period of roads leading to popular tourist destinations like Pokhara and Lumbini has severely affected the tourism industry. Abnormal delays in project completion have raised serious concerns about Nepal's project implementation capacity and contract enforcement practices.

State apathy to these recurrent and pervasive “potholes” in policies and unabated public anxiety put the very existence of the functional government under a gigantic interrogation mark. A strong “code of conduct” on public construction and its proper implementation, which is already long overdue, can make a substantive difference towards improving the socio-economic life.