The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has approved the designs for three interchanges put up on the 29.65-km-long Phase-I of the Outer Ring Road (ORR) at Vandalur, Nazarathpet and Nemilichery, the points where national highways cut across the ORR.
According to sources in the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC), the managing associate for the project, the design for the interchanges is being vetted presently. An interchange, normally put up at road junctions, will have a grade separator and ramps to permit traffic on the highway to pass through the junction without crossing any other traffic stream.
“The NHAI had some issues with the design submitted by the concessionaire, a consortium led by the GMR group. Now those have been sorted out. We are concurrently pursuing land acquisition according to the design requirement. Once the State government approves this and issues the G.O. we will go ahead. Work on construction of the interchanges is expected to commence in 3-4 months,” the official source said.
The interchange on the National Highway 4, the Bangalore Road, would be the biggest of the three. The existing Bangalore road has four lanes. Once the ORR is completed, the traffic has to cross the Bangalore road. In future, if the road is expanded to six lanes this interchange would be able to handle the substantially increased traffic flow.
Work on ORR phase I from Vandalur on NH-45 to Nemilichery on NH 205 is being implemented on Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer basis and the road component is expected to be completed within the stipulated time. Of the around 30-km-long road, 18 km has already been formed and black topping completed on four km. Of the 100 culverts, 40 have been completed, of 21 pedestrian underpasses 16 have been completed and almost all eight vehicular underpasses have been constructed.
The concession period for the Rs.1,081.4 crore project is 20 years, which also includes the construction time of 30 months. The six-lane facility would have two service lanes.
