Six New Chennai Metro Corridors Mooted by State

In an ambitious plan, the State government is mooting the long term idea of opening up six new Metro rail corridors across the city.

CHENNAI: In an ambitious plan, the State government is mooting the long term idea of opening up six new Metro rail corridors across the city and its two neighbouring districts. The proposal covers extended parts of the city, as far as Siruseri, situated in the extreme end of the OMR IT corridor.

City Express has learnt that the State government had commissioned a study by a private consultant to identify possible corridors along which the Metro rail network can be extended and accordingly created a master plan for it.

According to the report submitted to the State government, six possible routes have been identified along which the metro rail can be developed in the coming years.

The routes are (refer map) Red Hills to Siruseri, Light House to Poonamallee, Wimco Nagar to Sholinganallur, Pallavaram to Avadi, Vandalur to Pattabhiram and Thirumangalam to Paruthipet. The total length of the six corridors is 177.3 km. However, the report has cautioned that extending the Metro rail, the costliest mass public transport mode, could be viable only if additional revenue streams are identified. It has suggested tapping advertisement opportunities in the metro trains and levy of other additional charges.

“This is a preliminary engineering feasibility study on these six corridors based on parameters like alignment issues, presence of sharp curves, river and high tension transmission lines crossings and coastal, river flood zone restrictions,” said an official privy to the study.

Currently, two metro rail corridors are under construction in the city and the Alandur to Koyambedu segment is operational for the last few months, though the patronage, except during the recent rainy days, is still less.

The objective of the present report was to develop a travel demand model for the city and its extended areas by forecasting the travel demand for 20 years.

• The proposed routes, contained in a report commissioned by the State government, cut across the city to the outer areas including Sholinganallur in the IT corridor
• However, report has warned that measures need to be taken to make the construction monetarily viable

3 More Corridors in the Pipeline

Besides these six corridors, Chennai Metro Rail is preparing a detailed project report for three corridors — Madhavaram to Siruseri, Madhavaram to Sholinganallur and Koyambedu to Light House. Official sources said the report will be ready in six months