The Highways Department will soon call for consultants to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for the Rs. 1,420 crore Chennai Peripheral Road project.
The State government has recently sanctioned Rs. 10 crore for the preparation of the DPR.
Sources said the chosen consultant would be given about a year to prepare it.
The 162 km long road from Mamallapuram through Thiruporur, Singaperumal Koil, Sriperumbudur, Tiruvallur, Thamaraipakkam, Periyapalayam, Pudhuvoyal, Kattupalli and Ennore Port will include new roads spanning 83.2 km.
K. Sivaraman a resident of Thiruporur said that the road would be useful for those travelling to Sriperumbudur and on the Chennai-Bangalore Highway. “Companies at the Alathur SIDCO complex, which is 3 km from here, would find the road useful to reach Ennore Port. They would not then have to take the busy Rajiv Gandhi Salai,” he added.
“The proposal to form such a road will augur well for companies in Sriperumbudur and in the Oragadam belt for all their import and export requirements. At present, our exports go to Chennai port and it takes over two hours to reach there weaving through city traffic. If this highway comes up, it would take only an hour and there would not be as much traffic,” said Ram Ramachandran of Tes-Amm India, an e-waste recycling firm based in Oragadam.
The proposed road would connect four National Highways – NH 45, NH4, NH205 and NH 5 and five important State Highways – SH 57, SH 3, SH 50, SH 50A and SH 51.
K. Ramesh, a resident of Periyapalayam who commutes regularly to Tiruvottiyur, said the road would help develop the area.
“More industries will come up in the neighbourhood and north Chennai’s traffic congestion too will decrease, as vehicles from and to Andhra Pradesh can take this highway,” he said.
Existing roads running to a length of 78.6 km including the Singaperumal Koil-Sriperumbudur Road (approximately 23 km) which is now being converted into a four-lane road, Sriperumbudur–Tiruvallur Road (18 km), Thamaraipakkam to Periyapalayam (12 km) and the stretch from Puduvoyal to Pulicat (6 km) and another 15 km to Kattupalli would be improved under the project.
