Imagine a software mapping out 3-D images of a road design, suggesting alternatives based on cost and advising on the most technically sound and cost-effective version.

This ‘pathbreaking’ software called MX Roads, a Bentley systems product, has already helped design a difficult road through the Pir Panjal mountains in Jammu & Kashmir, as well as charted out widening of road sections at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. Now it is being used to suggest the most cost-effective designs for 3,400 km of state roads in Karnataka.

“It is a pathbreaking software that works very well for a client. In easy simple steps it helps design roads for virgin alignments or even upgrading/widening of existing roads. So much so that even a layman can help design the road. Earlier software in use was difficult to understand and needed well-trained engineers. The interesting aspect is that it suggests various alignments one can choose from and then draws up cost estimates for all of them,” says Venkat Ramana Shilla, Principal Engineer, Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick India Ltd.

He adds that they had used the software for designing of the Hyderabad-Vijayawada and Vijayawada-Machlipatnam sections on NH 9 that are part of the North-South corridor of the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP). “Now we are in the process of using it for a massive 3,400-km-long stretch in Karnataka,” says Shilla.

MX Roads was put to use to design a wider, four-lane road along NH 1A in J-K with just two engineers on the job. The software helped find just the right alignment in 38 km of hazardous hilly terrain. Other successes have been planning a 41-km-long ring road around Bangalore, a 270-km, six-lane Eastern Peripheral Expressway around Delhi, and a 300-km-long road network around Srinagar, 1,600 m above sea level.

... contd.