The Heroes Highway extension: A masterclass in designing tomorrow's problems at today's inflated prices

The Heroes Highway extension: A masterclass in designing tomorrow’s problems at today’s inflated prices

Dec 17, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

In a previous missive, I addressed the super-inflated contract pricing of the proposed lanes addition to the “concussion” highway in a simple cost-comparative analysis, I would now endeavour to expose the perpetual cycle of the transactional aspects of these projects. These occurrences are not attributable to human failure or oversight, but are purely by design to enrich a few.

Observations would have revealed a pattern that has been practised by the PPP Administration, where issues are created, allowed to fester until it becomes a “pain-point” for citizens, then in comes the “We care team” springing into action to alleviate the pains. Citizens breathing a sigh of relief, overlooks the optics and plunder.

Editor, beyond the fiasco of the Heroes Highway lies a corrosive pattern that plagues our national development: this is not an isolated failure, but a recurring blueprint. Time and again, state-funded projects are marred by inflated costs and flawed designs, revealing a systemic ailment where bureaucrats insert themselves into the domain of technocrats. This practice of sidelining engineering expertise for administrative overreach is a direct pipeline to plunder, transforming public treasure into private gain packaged with half-baked solutions. It is a cycle that must be shattered, not just to fix a road, but to halt the relentless hemorrhage of tax revenues that should be building a nation, not enriching a selected few.

The already scandalous Heroes Highway project, with its contracts awarded at 40-50% premiums, now reveals a deeper flaw: it is fundamentally misdesigned. The plan to add only 4.2km of a third lane, sandwiched in the middle of a 9.4km two-lane corridor, is not a solution—it is a blueprint for guaranteed congestion and future waste.

From a traffic management standpoint, this design is perplexingly inept. The core principle of roadway capacity is consistency. Introducing a brief three-lane section between two-lane ends creates what engineers’ term “lane drops.” This forces merging, a primary cause of turbulence, sudden braking, and bottlenecks. The promised “relief” in the middle will be nullified by severe congestion at both transition points, where traffic must funnel back down.

Furthermore, safety is compromised by the increased necessity for merging maneuvers, leading to a higher risk of rear-end and sideswipe collisions, particularly when the drops are poorly signed, causing driver confusion and erratic maneuvers. The problems are often compounded when the dropped lane is located too close to intersections (Massy to Haags Bosch Rds), and sometimes the lane that is dropped is under-utilized by drivers fearing stressful merges, further impacting overall efficiency. The project, therefore, substitutes one traffic problem for two new, predictable ones.

This raises grave questions. Was a reputable traffic impact study ever conducted? Were qualified traffic management design engineers consulted? The obvious flaw suggests not. Instead, it points to a project conceived in haste, devoid of holistic analysis, and focused solely on the transactional value of the initial construction contract.

The alarming conclusion is that this is a multi-faceted failure: first, price gouging at the contract stage; second, a technically flawed design that ensures underperformance. This creates a perfect and perpetual corrupt cycle: overspend on a defective solution, guarantee its failure, and then justify spending billions more on the inevitable “corrective” contracts in the future.

We are not witnessing mere incompetence. We are observing a pattern where project failure is a feature, not a bug—a perpetual scheme to siphon off public funds. The Heroes Highway extension, as designed, is an insult to the intelligence of every citizen who endures daily traffic and a blatant betrayal of public trust for private gain. It must be halted and subjected to independent, expert review before another dollar is wasted.

Sincerely,
Hemdutt Kumar

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The Heroes Highway extension: A masterclass in designing tomorrow’s problems at today’s inflated prices

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