The Times of India     09.12.2010

With 2 new flyovers, Anna Salai set for a new look

CHENNAI: The skyline from Anna Salai will no longer look the same. Putting all speculations to rest about the plan to build two new flyovers on Anna Salai, state highways minister Vellakoil M P Saminathan on Wednesday announced that his department would soon take up the work at an estimated cost of Rs 339 crore. The government had given its nod to the project in March this year.

Laying the foundation stone for the construction of an additional bridge near Thiru-vi-ka bridge in Adyar, Saminathan said his department would complete the piling work before March 2011, the deadline given by the Chennai Metro Rail Limited so as to allow the latter to begin the construction of tunnels on the arterial road. "The chief minister has already directed us to take up the work," he said.

The two four-lane grade-separators will help ease traffic on the road where traffic has grown manifold in the recent past. The first grade separator will run for 1.8 km, beginning at the new secretariat complex and connecting Blackers Road junction, Dams Road-General Patters Road junction and Binny Road-Pattulos Road junction near Spencer Plaza.

The second flyover will begin at Anna Arivalayam and connect Eldams Road-Thyagaraya Road intersection, Cenotaph Road junction, Venkata Narayana Road-Chamiers Road intersection and CIT Colony First Main Road junction. This grade separator would be 2.9 km long.

A comprehensive traffic and transportation study by the CMDA had strongly recommended this project in 2008. Certain quarters within the government had raised doubts over the implementation of the project, citing the ambience of the site. However, after the Highways Research Station surveyed the site and presented a grim future for the traffic scene on Anna Salai, the highways department decided to go ahead with the project. The detailed project report is now in its final stages.

"If the project is not taken up by highways department immediately, it will never materialise, because once Metro Rail digs its tunnel, there is every chance of piling work disturbing the tunnel," sources in the CMDA said. A committee-led by the director, Town and Country Planning, has already allocated Rs 100 crore from the infrastructure and amenities fund for this project

The highways department is now all set to hold discussions with the Chennai Metro Rail Limited over the delay in the project. "As per the original plan, the piling work should have begun in September, but with the lapse of three months, the highways department will hold discussions with Metro Rail to sort out the matter. Our initial phase covers only pile foundations and this will not take much time," said a senior government official. The department does not want to take any chances as the model code of conduct for the Assembly elections will come into effect in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, Saminathan said the construction of a four-lane flyover at Thirumangalam junction over Jawaharlal Nehru Salai will begin in ten days, and will cost Rs 47 crore.