20.5.14

Ennore Ports Speedway snippets


The TN 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 138 km 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 need to be acquired for the project that is expected to cost around Rs.13,475 crore.
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 30 km 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 19 km-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.
With residential colonies springing up along Inner Ring Road and Chennai Bypass Road, which were built to keep truck traffic off city roads, these stretches are also seeing chaotic movement of heavy vehicles and passenger vehicles these days, resulting in congestion and a rise in fatal accidents. Even the Outer Ring Road, which is under construction, will not be enough to meet the expected growth in traffic in coming years, industry sources say.
Government sources said the project was likely to get funding from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The detailed project report, which will cover aspects like topography; expected traffic and financial viability , will be ready by July . After getting the report, the government will start preliminary work for acquisition of land in the identified areas. While the existing four-lane road between Sriperumbudur and Tiruvallur will be taken up for widening as part of the project in the initial phase, the subsequent work will take place when the lands are acquired.

No comments: