The state government has set the ball rolling for building a peripheral road skirting Chennai to facilitate easy movement of container traffic to and from Ennore port and reduce congestion in an expanding city.
The highways department is in the process of preparing a detailed project report (DPR) for the 138km corridor connecting Pooncheri, near Mamallapuram, on East Coast Road with Kattupalli and Ennore ports, and has estimated that more than 900 hectares of land will have to be acquired for the project that is expected to cost around US$2.29 billion, reported The Times of India.
The lands to be acquired along the proposed eight-lane road have been identified.
"The project will be taken up in phases over the next five to ten years," said a senior official.
Interchanges , flyovers, bridges, over-bridges and widening of existing roads will be part of the plan.
The project will take traffic over Sriperumbudur lake, thereby reducing the distance. It will pass through the industrial belt of Singaperumal Koil, Oragadam , Sriperumbudur, Tiruvallur, Tamaraipakkam and Thatchoor.
A high-level committee comprising officials from highways and finance departments recently took stock of the project and suggested developing a new 30km link road to connect Thatchoor on Kolkata Highway (NH5) with Kattupalli by acquiring land from the industries department. In what could ease traffic at Tiruvallur junction , the government also wants to link the corridor with two bypass roads being built by the highways department and NHAI.
"With the 19km-long Maduravoyal-Chennai Port elevated corridor getting delayed due to a legal wrangle and last-mile connectivity problems holding up Ennore-Manali Road Improvement Project, there is a need for new road infrastructure to meet the growing demand ," an industrialist said.
It is felt that with the container terminals at Kattupalli and Ennore ports expected to see large-scale traffic in the coming years, the proposed peripheral road will help in movement of industrial and export cargo from several parts of the country to these ports, especially from the Japanese firms in the proposed Chennai-Bangalore industrial corridor.
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