Nearly 60% of the work to widen an 8-km stretch of the Tambaram-Mudichur-Sriperumbudur road has been completed. The ₹95-crore work to widen the present two-lane road into four lanes, includes construction of a minor bridge and widening of a minor and a major bridge.
The widening will help light vehicles proceeding from the G.S.T. Road to the Chennai–Bengaluru Highway since it connects these two national highways. This road, which witnesses heavy traffic, runs through several villages such as Manimangalam, Chethupattu, Pazhayapattu, Mannivakkam and Pushpagiri.
Already about 13 km of the 28-km-long road is four lanes wide, explained sources in the Highways Department. “The work is on schedule and already the necessary land acquisition and removal of encroachments have been completed. Though the contract period is till December, the widening is expected to be over before that,” said the source.
The department is carrying out the work only at night and that too only for about five hours a day. “This is because of the heavy traffic and since we can move the bitumen only at night,” another official source added.
Nandagopal, a private taxi driver, said the road was useful to people who want to reach industrial estates, including Oragadam and Sriperumbudur. “Sometimes when traffic chokes the Chennai-Bengaluru Highway, people proceeding towards Old Mahabalipuram Road and East Coast Road take this stretch. A few kilometres of the road before this work location needs to be widened. These villages are thickly populated and the road is a busy one. The government must form more such connecting roads,” he said.
Official sources said the widening of the 7-km stretch would be taken up in the next phase. Land had to be acquired for the same.
