Zip to Chennai in just two-and-a-half hours

Zip to Chennai in just two-and-a-half hours
New Delhi, DH News Service:

The travelling time between Bangalore and Chennai will come down to just two and a half hours from the current five to six hours, if a proposal of the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to build a greenfield expressway becomes a reality.


The expressway will be built with public-private participation on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. The 100 per cent access-controlled highway will allow vehicles to run up to 120 kmph.
Now, the distance between Bangalore and Chennai is 344 km and the proposed expressway will reduce it to 260 km, National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) chairman Brijeshwar Singh told Deccan Herald here.

The NHAI has already done the alignment study and completed a detailed project report in this regard. It hopes that the Chennai-Bangalore project will be successful, taking into account the density of the traffic on this stretch.

Positive response

“The ministry expects positive response from the private sector to participate in this project as it would be a win-win situation for both the builder and the ministry,” he said. Singh said the project was part of the ministry’s plan to build 1,087 km of expressway in four identified stretches. The other stretches are: 66-km Delhi-Meerut, 400-km Vadodara-Mumbai and 277-km Kolkata-Dhanbad.

A sum of Rs 16 crore to Rs 17 crore will be spent on each kilometre and the State government will also actively participate in the project as it involves land acquisition also. To expedite the highways project, the ministry is planning to constitute a expressway authority in the next three months.

Unlike the national highways, these expressways will have eight to ten lanes. And both sides of the roads will be barricaded to ensure seamless movement of vehicles.