The 148.3 km-long Krishnagiri-Walajahpet stretch of the Chennai-Bengaluru Road has been chosen one among the top 20 National Highways stretches in the country. It came sixth in terms of the total score obtained. It got 87.15 points under three heads — user services, highway efficiency and highway safety.
The 142.87 km stretch — running through four districts Krishnagiri, Tirupattur, Vellore and Ranipet — witnesses around 37,000 vehicles daily. “We have divided the stretch into three portions and have individual accident response teams with ambulances and cranes. Apart from this we have emergency calling booths every 2 km through which people can call our control room,” said a source in the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
The toll road, which is maintained by L&T Infrastructure, has lighting facilities in all urban stretches, enough signages that tell you where ATMs and pharmacies are located, toilets and drinking water facilities at both toll plazas. “We still have to widen two stretches for a length of 5 km at Ambur and also one near Palar river. These will be taken up by May and work will be completed in a year. Our attempt is to provide quality services to road users,” explained the official.
In the heading highway efficiency, for which 45 marks were earmarked, this stretch was given 41.6 points. The parameters included operating speed, delay at toll plaza, availability of service road in built-up area, traffic volume, uniformity of carriageway width and illumination in built-up area.
Under highway safety for which 35 marks were awarded, accidents, incident response time, solar blinkers and footpaths were marked. The Krishnagiri-Walajahpet stretch got 27.17 marks. And under user services, for which 20 marks were earmarked, this stretch scored 18.37 marks.
The criteria the team looked for included plantation, cleanliness along highways, wayside amenities, functioning of toilets and availability of drinking water at the toll plazas.
