Burgeoning Velachery will receive a major infrastructure boost this year, with the highways department planning to start work on three new elevated roads and a skywalk in a locality that is expected to soon become one of the city's busiest transit hubs.
One of the elevated roads in Velachery will come up along Velachery Main Road. The highways department will build the other elevated road in nearby Medavakkam.
The first elevated road will start on the Raj Bhavan side of on Velachery Main Road, cross Phoenix Mall and descend after the Velachery Bypass Road junction. “The length of the road will be only 1.2km, but it will cost the government around `400 crore as a lot of land acquisition will be required,“ a highways depart ment official said.
Not far away , a 2km elevated road will go past three junctions on Marmalong Bridge Road. “This will be relatively cheap. We have estimated that it will cost `125 crore,“ the official said.
Motorists who live in or regularly pass through the area welcomed the proposed roads, saying there is an urgent need to decongest the stretch.
“The stretch is wide till Five Furlong Road, but it gets narrow after that,“ said C Shivaramakrishnan, a resident of Velachery . “Whenever someone attempts to take a U-turn, traffic comes to a standstill.“
The department has also proposed a skywalk connecting Velachery and Vijaynagar bus stand with the Velachery MRTS station. The 1.1-kmlong skywalk will connect Vijaynagar bus stand and the Velachery MRTS station. “The skywalk will have escalators and will be easy for people to use,“ the official said.
The authorities have proposed several other elevated roads across the city . The department has finalised the alignment one to connect Tidel Park on Old Mahabalipuram Road and the Thiruvanmiyur RTO on East Coast Road. The elevated road, a little more than 1km long, will cost `500 crore, of which land acquisition will account for `350 crore.
“Land acquisition will be challenging and may cause delays,“ an official said. The original plan was to build a grade separator along LB Road, instead of a perpendicular stretch.
“The cost of land acquisition on LB Road would have been much higher than on this road,“ he added. To avoid cost escalation, construction of the elevated road will commence only after land acquisition is completed.
The department recently floated tenders for consultants to build a 45km elevated road along OMR -which, when completed, will be the country's longest elevated corridor. Chief minister J Jayalalithaa also said last week that the government will conduct a feasibility study for an elevated road from Tirusulam to Chengalpet.
JAPAN TO FOOT BILL- 17 new projects for city transport at cost of Rs 2,000cr
Chennai:
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The city is set to get at least 17 new projects. The metro wing has proposed to build 12 grade separators, a foot over-bridge, a river bridge, a skywalk and widen two roads. These will cost `2,000 crore, which will be funded by the Japanese International Corporation Agency . Grade separators alone will cost `1,725 crore.
Work on three flyovers -at the junction of Kundrathur Road and Santhai Road in Pallavaram on GST Road, junction of Perambur -Redhills Road near Kolathur Rettai Eri on Inner Ring Road and at the junction of Taramani Road, Tambaram-Velachery Road and Velachery Bypass -will start at a cost of `231.68 crore. Reports for 12 other projects are being prepared. Some of these projects include a bridge across Adyar river on Mount-Poonamallee Road in Ramapuram, a flyover at the Mount Poonamallee-Avadi Road junction, at ChennaiChittoor-Bangalore Road near Kattupakkam and another across the Cooum.
The government has also sanctioned 15 projects under the Chennai Metropolitan Development Plan. Some of them include a skywalk connecting Central station, park station and government hospital on EVR Salai, pedestrian subways near AG Church near Chinna Malai on Anna Salai, MKN Road junction in Guindy on GST Road, near Malladi Company on Jawaharlal Nehru Road. The government also sanctioned `40 crore to construct a flyover connecting junctions of CMBT and Kaliamman Koil Road on Jawaharlal Nehru Road.
The Prime Minister’s Office is holding detailed consultations with industry to get infrastructure and construction projects off the ground to spur investment and economic activity.
Between Tuesday and Wednesday around 10 top executives from the corporate sector met PMO officials to discuss ways to remove hurdles blocking projects. The first round of interaction was with joint secretary A K Sharma, the IAS officer, who is credited with Narendra Modi’s Vibrant Gujarat campaign that is said to have generated massive investments for the state.
“Basically they want to know how to get the projects going and what are the key implementation hurdles where the government can step in,” said a company ex
ecutive, who attended one of the meetings. Land acquisition, environment, problems related to public-private partnership (PPP) projects and funding have been identified as the key stumbling blocks.
“Whether it’s aspirin or oxygen, something is needed. Some of us have suggested that we should go after the low hanging fruits so that confidence is restored and the economy is back on the high-growth track,” said TIL Ltd CMD Sumit Mazumder, who is also the CII president-designate.
The industry is now go
ing to submit a wish-list that includes amendments to the land acquisition law and allowing of renegotiation of PPP contracts, which corporate executives said is a common practice in other countries. They also said that despite the steps announced by the government in the Budget, funding for infrastructure sector remains a challenge, especially as lenders have hit the exposure ceiling. Sources said companies in sectors such as roads are finding it difficult to arrange money to work on projects.
Apart from Mazumder, GVK vice-chairman G V Sanjay Reddy , HCC CMD Ajit Gulabchand, C B Richard Ellis CMD Anshuman Magazine, ReNew Power Ventures chairman & CEO Sumant Sinha were present in the meeting, along with represenatives from Essar, Vedanta, L&T and Raheja group.
