Townships to dot Chennai-B'lore expressway

As the government has planned to build four expressways in the country, including Bangalore-Chennai, to ensure seamless movement of people and goods on an access-controlled route, the Ministry wants to develop townships and SEZs around the expressways and provide additional traffic, increasing the viability of the projects. The Ministry officials have already held the first round of talks with major real-estate developers for the proposed projects and have got a positive feed-back, sources in the ministry told Deccan Herald.

“Various models will be looked at for executing the expressway projects, including the current build-operate-transfer model,” sources said.
Once the Bangalore-Chennai road project materialises, the travelling time between the two cities will be just two and a half hours from the current five to six hours. At present the Bangalore-Chennai distance is 344 km while the proposed expressway will reduce it to 260 km.

The NHAI has already done the alignment study and completed a detailed project report of this venture. It is hoping that the Chennai-Bangalore project would be a successful one taking into account the density of traffic on this stretch.
A sum of Rs 16-17 crore will be spent on each km and the state governments will actively participate in the project as it involves land acquisition also. An authority will be set up to expedite the project.

A draft expressways authority bill is being prepared by the Planning Commission and it is almost 80 per cent complete. Once complete, the draft will be discussed with all stake holders and finalised, said Planning Commission member Gajendra Haldea.