Navigating on a national highway is often cumbersome due to the sheer number of routes and detours between two locations. It gets worse when you have to rely on traditional mapping services. To address this and other issues that motorists face on highways, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) launched their very first highway-utility mobile application, Sukhad Yatra.
The final version of the mobile application was launched by the Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Mr Nitin Gadkari, on March 07, 2018, in New Delhi. The application has gained an overwhelming response from the audience with 40,000 downloads within the first week of its launch.
Several people who have downloaded and used the application claim that it gave a seamless and smooth user-experience. The highway application has been developed by Com Vision (India) Pvt. Ltd. and is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store for download.
Sukhad Yatra, which translates to “Happy Journey”, is a one-stop solution to all kinds of problems and issues that commuters face while travelling on highways. It has seven distinct built-in tools that improve the commuter’s experience, all the while collecting the data necessary to promote infrastructural growth of the highways.
Sukhad Yatra Features
The application has two distinct features “Report an Issue” and “Report Summary” through which NHAI records grievances. The highway users can register their issues in the Report an Issue feature and keep track of the progress of the registered complaints in the Report Summary section.
The Sukhad Yatra app is compatible with the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) systems at Toll complexes. It offers buy FASTag feature, an online store for buying the RFID-encoded tags. This, in turn, complements the government’s ETC drive that helps reduce traffic congestion and fraudulent practices at Toll plazas.
The application is integrated with a GPS navigation feature helps commuters pinpoint their current location and all the Toll plazas along their way.
Another tool, Toll Plazas Enroute, helps the commuter pre-plan their journey, especially where they will halt. The Nearby feature in the application helps in locating civic amenities such as restaurants, fuel stations, ATMs, etc. It also tracks Highway Nest and Highway Nest (Mini), the latest national highway civic-amenity centres constructed by the NHAI.
This User Interface of the application has been designed keeping all age groups in mind. Sukhad Yatra is an approach initiated by the NHAI to better commute experience and overall highway infrastructure of the country with feedback from the motorists, the most important stakeholders of the highways sector.
The government organisation has also launched their very first toll-free helpline number (1033) to tend to all kinds of emergencies and incidents on the highways.