You could soon drive at 130-140 kmph on expressways as the Centre plans to enhance the speed limits from the current 100kmph. Highways minister Nitin Gadkari told TOI that the norms will be changed as more expressways with complete access control are built across the country.

Speaking at an investor summit in Gurgaon earlier this week, the minister had talked about driving vehicles at high speed on such stretches where no slow-moving vehicles and pedestrians are allowed. "We will come out with separate norms since such stretches will be access-controlled with minimum entry and exit points. The speed limit on other roads will be different and safety will be the parameter for setting the norms," Gadkari said.

Sources said the speed limits in urban areas and for specific areas are notified by the local administration and police authorities. "They are free to specify and enforce the speed limits," a transport ministry official said. Gadkari has announced to fast-track rolling out of new Mumbai-Vadodara, Delhi-Jaipur and Delhi-Amritsar expressways and the bids for the first stretch will be out in the next 2-3 weeks. The minister has asked his department to see whether the provision to add bituminous coat on concrete roads be allowed to check tyre-bursts and to make them safer.

In fact, globally now there is growing demand of reducing speed limits on urban and rural areas to curb road crashes, fatalities and injuries. Moreover, there are also debates whether vehicles should have speedometers indicating that these can run at 280-200 kmph since driving at higher speed than the notified limit is illegal.

Gadkari said the government is keen to modernise the entire transport system and ending 'permit raj'. "We are going ahead with declaring more state highways as national highways so that we can expand them with Central investment for faster and safer movement of vehicles," he said.