B'lore-Chennai expressway gets clearance from Centre

The expressway, the first of its kind in the country, will be built with public-private participation on a build-operate- transfer (BOT) basis and it will be a 100 per cent access-controlled road.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved the project recently. Once the project becomes a reality, the current five-hour travelling time between Bangalore and Chennai, will be reduced to three hours.

The expressway will reduce the distance between the two cities by 86 km; from 344 km to 258 km, and drivers can hope to step up their accelerators up to 120 kmph without being bothered about potholes on the way.

The road will run parallel to the existing National Highway 4, and pass through Kolar, Palamaneru, Chittoor and Ranipet. It will start near Hoskote from Bangalore, covering 74 km in Karnataka, 90 km in Andhra Pradesh and 94 km in Tamil Nadu.

However, it will not touch any of the towns of the three states except connecting cities, a senior official of  the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways told Deccan Herald.
The road will be constructed at a cost of nearly Rs 18 crore to Rs 20 crore per km. The State governments will actively participate in the project as it also involves land acquisition.

To expedite the project, the ministry is planning to constitute an expressway authority in the next three months. The implementation of the project, expected to start early next year, is likely to be completed in next three to four years.

This project is part of the government plans to build over 1,000 km of expressways at a cost of Rs 16,680 crore. The other projects include the 400-km Vadodara-Mumbai, 66-km Delhi-Meerut and the 277-km Kolkata-Dhanbad expressways.