Chennai Port - Maduravoyal Expressway snippets

It will stretch over 19 km, cost a whopping Rs 1,655 crore and be the artery of freight traffic between Chennai port and other parts of the country. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday laid the foundation stone for one of India’s longest elevated expressways connecting Chennai Port to Maduravoyal in the outskirts of the city. Its scale can be gauged from the fact that the only comparable projects of this size are the Mumbai transharbour link stretching from Sewri to Nhava and the Hosur elevated expressway in Bangalore. Inaugurating the project, Singh said the project aimed at quick and continuous dispersal of freight to and out of Chennai Port to other parts of the country via the Golden Quadrilateral corridor, skirting the city’s congestion. The four-lane elevated corridor, conceived by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on a Build-Operate-and-Transfer basis (BOT), will facilitate non-stop movement of freight from all over South India. Union shipping and surface transport minister T R Baalu said the city needed an expressway as the Chennai and Ennore Ports have almost seen a doubling in turnover and volume of cargo over the past four years. While the cargo throughput (the quantity or amount of raw material processed within a given time) at Chennai port increased to 57.15 Metric Tonne (MT) in 2007-08 from 43.81 MT in 2004-05, the throughput at Ennore port went up from 9.48 MT to 11.56 MT in the same period. He said the city needed a dedicated expressway as movement of heavy vehicles are banned through it during the day. The tolled elevated expressway will take off from the Chennai port near the war memorial gate before it snakes along the banks of the Cooum river till Koyambedu from where it will travel along the NH-4. Apart from the port cargo, the expressway will also benefit common road users as entry ramps will be provided at Sivananda Salai (near the new secretariat complex), College Road, and exit ramps at Kamarajar Salai, Spur Tank Road. Koyambedu will have both entry and exit ramps. Though the expressway is expected to be ready in three years, officials anticipate a delay — like all big projects in the country. Senior vice-president DV Raju of Soma Enterprise Ltd, New Delhi, which has won the bid to execute the work, said detailed designs for the elevated expressway would take a couple of months. Work from Maduravoyal till Koyambedu is expected to be smooth, after which the expressway will travel through the banks of Cooum river where 12,000 families of slums have to be rehabilitated. The state government and Chennai Port Trust will equally share the cost of land acquisition and rehabilitation of slum dwellers. The official, on condition of anonymity, said the state has to show more teeth in removing encroachments along the rivers. As per the expressway plan, Cooum’s beautification is also on the cards.