Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s intervention has meant that a Chennai Corporation project to lay concrete roads across the city has seen massive expansion in scope. City Express had reported on July 4 that the civic body was preparing to lay around 600 concrete roads. But after the CM’s intervention, this number has now risen to 1,084.
The concrete roads project is part of the Tamil Nadu government’s stated intention to build roads across the State that would be durable. Now, 1,084 roads, measuring 181 km, will be laid at a cost of over `80 crore.
Of these 1,084 roads, 1,077 will be interior roads. This marks a paradigm shift as far as road-laying in Chennai is concerned. So far, concrete roads have been reserved only for narrow bylanes, where road rollers would be unable to enter. But now, the concrete roads, using a method called ‘whitetopping’, will be laid even along wider roads.
The only large roads that are going to be concretised are Tondiarpet’s Ellaiah Street, Broadway’s Anna Pillai Street, Mylapore’s South Mada Street, Sozhinganallur’s Panchayat Office Road and TP Chatram Road, 12th Avenue and 13th Avenue in Anna Nagar.
Corporation sources told City Express that bad planning by the various arms of the government, resulting in frequent digging up of roads was among the primary reasons for the bad state of the road network in the city.
The concrete roads project would put an end to this, they added. The rationale behind such a claim is simple. Once a concrete road is laid, digging it up is going to be a lot tougher than with bitumen roads.
Further, the Corporation would impose a 15-year ban on digging up concrete roads. This, combined with the inherent durability of concrete roads, is expected to give Chennai a solid and smooth road network for much of the next decade.
To this end, the Corporation is now in the process of holding a series of meeting with stakeholders like Metro Water, Electricity Board, BSNL and other private telecom companies. Being the ones that make the frequent road cuts, they have been given the list of 1,084 roads.
Chennai Mayor Saidai S Duraisamy, Corporation Commissioner D Karthikeyan, Chief Engineer (General) M Ramamurthi and other civic body officials have so far held meetings with representatives from around 20 telecom companies, and met with officials from Metro Water and Electricity Board on Wednesday.
The Corporation top brass has asked these parties to plan their works accordingly and finish them in the next couple of months.
Sources in the Corporation told City Express that with these many stakeholders in play, the road laying works cannot be taken up in one chunk and that they would be carried out in parts in coordination with the stakeholders.