News Approved.

This is going to be really confusing now. Renumbering of ALL the NHs across India is going to be a massive job, which will ultimately confuse us all. Not only this, I guess, everything and everybody would need to get accustomed to the new NHs! Travel books, travel websites over the internet, not to mention ALL the road signs which mention various NHs - everything would become obsolete, until revamped with these "new" numbers!

I wonder what the National Highways, say, for instance, the NH-1 (which is perhaps one of the best National Highways we have here up North) would become after it is renumbered!

Its a massive job alright and will take time to get used to. But how will renumbering them "scientifically" help us? all we need is just numbers for reference and I don't know why they want to change them.

The NH-1 will be an even numbered highway and a 2 digit one I guess

This is news to me. We are so accustomed to the National Highway numbers that it feels awkard that they will be renumbered. For instance if someone mentions NH-17 then immediately we associates it with Goa Highway but now it won't be the same.

Now NH-1 will be some highway in Arunachal Pradesh and most probably the Srinagar highway will be renamed as NH-2.

Damn! This just keeps getting better and better! *Poof*

My mistake. Reading the article make me feel that it will be double digit for important highway for better identification by commuters or whatever that was. I wonder how a two digit number is easy to identify than a single didgit. Someone please make me understand this.

Sixty - Nine

I am sorry to hear this bad news, but then heard about this speculation few year back as well when the National Highway project was started under the BJP government. But it never got materialized, as I see quite a number of problems and pot holes in between. Like our National Highway No.'s would have to be changed world wide in all website, maps and all travel guides. In India itself, the change of number would require to repaint all the existing road sign slabs as well as the road sign overhead boards. Then the whole road map of India would have to be taken out of market and then would have to be bring upon with the new NH numbers. And as per me it aint any easy task man, this would require quite an effort and planning for it to do successfully and correctly....

Instead of spending money on renaming why cant the government construct new NHs and maintain the existing one properly

why dont they just follow the US' system used in numbering of Interstate Highways:

Interstate Highway System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Makes sense to me . North-South is odd numbered and East-West is even numbered.

It'll take time to get accustomed to the new numbers but I feel it will be beneficial in the long run. Both in terms of maintenance of the highways and also to the commuters.
Maintenance might be easy in a way that if some highway is referred in a report mentioning the highway number, one doesn't have to open a map and search for hours that in which part the highway is.

Commuters might get lost while traveling and not everybody travels with a hitech GPS device or a phone with a GPS installed in his car, bike etc. to check the route every now and then.
Worse will be at night when there won't be around to ask. Then in that case one might not get a sense of direction of which way to head when he comes to a multiple road junction; not everywhere there will be signboards mentioning the place name and mostly it'll be written in the native language which one might not understand at all or as it is India even if it is written in English, there will be some political parties banner pasted on top of it. The highway number would anyways be mentioned on the milestones every other kilometer.

So following the number pattern of the highway one is traveling he might find the correct way or decide at least whether he is traveling in the right direction (north/south or east/west).

I feel these are the theoretical scenarios when these new numbers might be helpful. Don't know practically how helpful it'll be though.

I may be totally wrong on this.....

Renumbering will have its own costs. New Govt. Maps in every office, New Paintjobs on all the highway related boards & hoardings... Many Records will have to be changed for compatibility, including private ones like Google Maps.

Even People will have to change their addresses, and issue new contact cards. Each and everyone has to memorize their used highways again, with the new numbers...

Doesn't Government have other places to put their funds on?

So what if its scientific? People can carry maps to navigate. They don't really need some specific numbering to travel, do they?

^^ well people need to make money under the table.. so they thought why not re number the highways..

At least to me its not going to change anything... i never bothered to remember any of those no's - should i . All i see is the point to point place names..

+1
I never keep a record on which all highways i rode or drive other than place names. The only two routes which I love to use numbers instead of place names are NH-7 and NH-47.. So I will only consider seriously learning the names of these two routes

It will lead to confusion only in conversation and referrals. It will take some time to get used to, and, as promised, we shall see how the process simplifies the numbering.