CHENNAI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced 3500 km of national highway projects in Tamil Nadu at an investment of Rs 1.03 lakh crore in the Union Budget on Monday.
This includes the Madurai-Kollam corridor and Chittoor-Thatchur corridor. The construction will start next year. The project is part of the economic corridor projects. Already, bids have been invited for the 116 km Chittoor-Thatchur corridor, said a National Highways official.
He said that bids for the Madurai-Kollam corridor where a 150 km stretch will come under Tamil Nadu's jurisdiction would be invited soon. "These are inter-state corridors and are being developed as economic corridors," he said.
Meanwhile, bids for the Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway have already been invited. The work on the 262-km, six-lane, access-controlled Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway project, which begins at Hoskote in Karnataka and ends at Outer Ring Road near Chennai, was to start in the last financial year after an announcement was made by the Finance Minister during the budget session of parliament last year but due to the lockdown it has been delayed.
Similarly, work on the 20.3 km Maduravoyal-Chennai Port elevated corridor is also likely to begin this financial year. The Chennai Port-Maduravoyal elevated corridor could be re-designed into a double-decker project and have six to eight lanes.
The Finance Minister also announced 1100 km of national highway works in Kerala at an investment of Rs 65,000 crore, including a 600 km section of the Mumbai-Kanyakumari corridor. A National Highway official said that of this only a 75 km stretch comes under Tamil Nadu's jurisdiction. The highway passes through the Konkan stretch linking Kerala and Karnataka.
Meanwhile, the Centre also confirmed funding of Chennai Metro's Phase-II of 118.9 km at a cost of Rs 63,246 crores. The Finance Minister said that the Centre would work towards raising the share of public transport in urban areas through the expansion of metro rail networks. A total of 702 kilometres (kms) of conventional metro was operational and another 1,016 kms of metro and Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) was under construction in 27 cities, she added.
This also comes as Chennai Metro Rail is likely to take up the task of conducting a feasibility study and preparing a Detailed Project Report on a mass transit system in the Manchester of South India. It is learnt that the 10-month study which includes preparing both a feasibility report and a detailed project report would cost the state exchequer around Rs 13 crore.
