Golden Quadrilateral

The Golden Quadrilateral
Highway map of India with the Golden Quadrilateral highlighted in solid blue colour
Route information
Maintained by NHAI
Length	5,846 km (3,633 mi)
Existed	July 2013; 11 years ago (July 2013)–present
Kolkata – Delhi
Length	1,453 km (903 mi)
Major intersections	NH 44 & NH 19
Delhi – Mumbai
Length	1,419 km (882 mi)
Major intersections	NH 48
Mumbai – Chennai
Length	1,290 km (800 mi)
Major intersections	NH 48
Chennai – Kolkata
Length	1,684 km (1,046 mi)
Major intersections	NH 16
Location
Country	India
Highway system
Roads in India Expressways National State Asian

The Golden Quadrilateral (Hindi: स्वर्णिम चतुर्भुज, romanized: Svarnim Chaturbhuj; abbreviated GQ) is a national highway network connecting several major industrial, agricultural and cultural centres of India. It forms a quadrilateral with all the four major metro cities of India forming the vertices, viz., Delhi (north), Kolkata (east), Mumbai (west) and Chennai (south). Other major cities connected by this network include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Balasore, Bhadrak, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Durgapur, Faridabad, Guntur, Gurugram, Jaipur, Kanpur, Pune, Kolhapur, Surat, Vijayawada, Eluru, Ajmer, Visakhapatnam, Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Agra, Mathura, Dhanbad, Gandhinagar, Udaipur, and Vadodara. The main objective of these super highways is to reduce the travel time between the major cities of India, running roughly along the perimeter of the country. The North–South corridor linking Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir) and Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu), and East–West corridor linking Silchar (Assam) and Porbandar (Gujarat) are additional projects. These highway projects are implemented by the National Highway Authority Of India (NHAI). At 5,846 kilometres (3,633 mi), it is the largest highway project in India and the fifth longest in the world.^[1] It is the first phase of the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), and consists of two, four, and six-lane express highways, built at a cost of ₹600 billion (US$7.2 billion).^[2] The project was planned in 1999, launched in 2001, and was completed in 7 January 2012.^[3]

The Golden Quadrilateral project is managed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways. The vast majority of the system is not access controlled, although safety features such as guardrails, shoulders, and high-visibility signs are in use. The Mumbai–Pune Expressway, the first controlled-access toll road to be built in India, is a part of the GQ Project but not funded by NHAI, and is separate from the old Mumbai–Pune section of National Highway 48 (India). Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) has been one of the major contributors to the infrastructural development activity in the GQ project.^{[not verified in body]}