TrafficInfraTech Magazine Linking People Places & Progress
What sets Dr. Harikishan Reddy, Chairman, Cube Highways apart is not just his two decades of experience in infrastructure development/funding and Traffic Engineering, but it is also his domain knowledge systematically accumulated through his wide ranging experience built on top of his formal education in transport. In an exclusive interview with Mangala Chandran, Dr. Reddy talks about what motivated him to be transportation professional and his Company’s focus on enhancing the ride quality of India’s road networks.
Unfortunately, today, urban transportation planning is mostly advised by transaction advisors. For better planning of transportation systems, there is a need to refocus education on travel demand estimation and transportation planning and maintain a balance between transportation planners and engineers.
You have over two and half decades of professional experience in the field of Traffic engineering & transport planning and highway projects. You are one of the few mobility experts in the country who has taken Transportation as a subject at a very high academic level and has made that as a successful career…
When I was a third-year under-graduate civil engineering student (in 1989-90), I attended a guest lecture of Prof. Raghava Chari, an eminent scholar, then teaching at NIT Warangal. This lecture on “Transportation Systems and Mobility Solutions for Future” and his method of presentation left a lasting impression and motivated me to pursue masters and Ph. D. in Transportation Engineering.
What have been the highpoints during your journey to be now the Chairman of Cube Highways?
Many. A ten CGPA at IIT Kanpur, time spent with Dr. Abdul Kalam at Rashtrapati Bhawan as part of twenty young engineers group for interdisciplinary research, growing Scott Wilson India and Feedback HSS Integrated consulting companies, the largest consulting companies in India, in just about two to three years, representing Indian Infra Industry at Paris World Road Congress on an Invitation from Government of France, creating a largest consulting company for travel demand estimation and transportation planning (V R TECHNICHE Consultant Pvt Ltd), guiding teams for development of a Vision-AI based fully automatic traffic counting and classification system for counting mixed traffic under free flow condition, and now developing Cube Highways – one of the largest private road operators in India – which was a startup in 2014.
How is Cube Highways leveraging technology advancements and innovations to enhance the quality of its highway projects?
Cube Highways lays lot of emphasis on advanced and state-of-the-art investigations for profiling road assets. Cube was first to use Network Survey Vehicle and Falling Weight Deflectometer for functional and structural profiling of pavements – these help in derivation of optimal pavement maintenance strategies. Use of (i) superior materials, like, Highly Modified Asphalts, glass grids, road meshes, etc., (ii) superior mixes, like, stone matrix asphalt, fibre-reinforced micro-surfaces, etc., and (iii) optimal maintenance methods, like, cold and hot in place recycling, cold and hot in plant recycling, etc., enhance pavement life and reduce requirement of resources. A number of tools developed by Cube, like, RoadAID for routine maintenance, BuildAID for major maintenance and balance works, HiRATE for rating asset quality, AI based asset mapping and condition assessment application, etc., help in real-time condition assessment, monitoring works progress and quality assurance.
Today, we are talking about green mobility. How does Cube Highways address environmental and social governance criteria in its investment decisions?
Rooftop and ground mounted solar plants at toll plazas, solar power for street lighting and ATMS, advanced rainwater harvesting methods, use of warm and cold bituminous mixes for maintenance, LED streetlights, electric vehicles at project sites, reducing material requirement by using superior materials for maintenance and recycling of pavements are some of the initiatives that Cube considers for sustainability.
Recently, for 6-laning of Ghaziabad – Aligarh Section of Gt Road, Cube milled 5.25 lakh metric tonnes of bituminous layers and used 100% of material for recycling. Ponds dug by Cube in the State of Rajasthan for ground water recharging are highly appreciated by local communities and administration. Community development by skilling people living alongside of Cube’s roads by distribution of scholarships to meritorious but economically backward students from government schools, computer literacy centres at toll plazas, tailoring training centres for women, setting up of clean drinking facilities and libraries at schools are regular practices by Cube to give it back to the society. Cube has a dedicated E&S desk for designing and implementing these environmental and social initiatives. All these efforts are integral part of Cubes Investment and O&M thesis.
You are known for your expertise in establishing economic viability and influencing investment strategies in highway and transportation projects. Please elaborate. Infrastructure investment ecosystem in India is evolving…
While India always had an extensive road network (it is the second largest in the world now), the serviceability in terms of capacity, mobility and riding quality has always been a problem. NHDP was the first big attempt to improve the serviceability of Indian National Highways. Given the size, development of National Highway Network through private participation was the right step. Given the limited capital available in India, road development through PPP hit a road block by 2015 and the road network developed till then also started to crumble. Bringing in funds like Cube to operate and maintain developed roads, separating road building and road O&M through models like HAM and TOT have ensured continuity of PPP in Indian Road Sector.
Your expertise is also in studying traffic/travel demand in both the highway sector and public transportation systems. What are the key learnings?
Speaking about highway sector – we had just about 40,000km of National Highways in late 90’s of which nearly half in very bad condition with single or intermediate lane configuration whereas this has increased to more than 1,30,000km now. While the base traffic at all India level is growing, increasing highway network will result in muted growth generally and even negative growth on some corridors. In the last few decades, trucks in India have also evolved from 16 ton carrying 2-axle Trucks to mostly 5 and 6 axle trucks now. These are poorly understood and resulted in wrong investments by private sector.
Coming to public transportation systems, in spite of good ridership, at current ticket prices, they are not feasible for private investments if based only on farebox. Innovative models need to be evolved, if private investments are to be attracted for public transportation systems. Without considering urban size and form, there is a great desire by local authorities to build metro rail systems – these are going to struggle. For metro systems to be successful, the metro network should have a threshold route length and network.
Coming back to making Traffic/Transport as a career, what is the awareness level in India and how important it is to get academic knowledge base to be able to contribute to the sector?
Because, as I mentioned earlier, the focus in the last few decades has been on building transport network. This resulted in most of the transportation professionals preferring engineering, like, design, progress monitoring and quality assurance over planning. Some of the big consulting companies do not even carryout traffic studies. Therefore, there is a scarcity of good travel demand modellers and transport planners. Given this preference in practicing industry, most of the premier institutes in India, like IITs and NITs have mostly pavement materials and engineering oriented curriculum.