The Tamil Nadu (TN) government has started building a peripheral road skirting Chennai to facilitate easy movement of container volume 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 kilometer (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 13,475 crore.
A Senior official said that 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."
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 National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).