CHENNAI: The proposed 778-km Hyderabad- Chennai high-speed rail corridor, a project that will reshape inter-city travel, has moved a step closer to reality with the South Central Railway submitting the final alignment to be included in the Detailed Project Report (DPR) to the Tamil Nadu government and seeking approvals to keep the survey work on track. I Jayakumar, member secretary of the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA), told TNIE that the DPR for the highspeed rail corridor will be finalised within a month after the state government grants its approval. At Tamil Nadu’s request, the alignment has been revised to include a station at Tirupati, replacing the earlier plan to pass through Gudur, Jayakumar added.
The corridor, which has been designed for speeds that will slash the current 12-hour journey to around 2 hours 20 minutes, will have two stations in Tamil Nadu — Chennai Central and a new station on the Chennai Ring Road near Minjur. Further, the railways has also requested nearly 50 acres around each station for transit-oriented development to create new commercial and mobility hubs.
In a letter to the state transport department earlier this week, the South Central Railway sought early finalisation of the alignment and station locations, in-principle approval for the acquisition of land, and incorporation of the rail corridor into Tamil Nadu’s long-term infrastructure master plan.
High-speed network section in TN includes 12-km tunnel
The railways also requested joint field visits with state officials to avoid delays to the Final Location Survey, which is being carried out under a timebound schedule. The Chennai-Hyderabad corridor is one of the two highspeed routes planned in the southern region—the other linking Hyderabad with Bengaluru.
Both are part of a longer- term national push to expand India’s high-speed rail footprint beyond the Mumbai- Ahmedabad line, with corridors designed to connect emerging economic hubs across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. The move comes in the wake of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s announcement in September that a survey for the project was already in progress. “Very soon, the bullet train is going to come to South India.
A survey is being done. It will connect Hyderabad, Chennai, Amravati, and Bengaluru, all four cities,” he had said at an event in Visakhapatnam. For Chennai, the project is significant because the 61-km stretch within Tamil Nadu includes two major station proposals — Chennai Central and Chennai Ring Road/Minjur — set to anchor the city’s integration with the high-speed network. The alignment is based on surveys carried out by government consultancy RITES Limited.
The land requirement for the stretch has been estimated at 223.44 hectares, with railway officials noting that no forest land has been involved — an element expected to ease statutory environmental clearances. The alignment crosses 65 roads and 21 high-tension electricity lines, requiring close coordination with state departments and utility agencies to ensure structural clearance for the elevated highspeed rail system.
The Tamil Nadu section also includes a technically complex feature: an 11.6-km tunnel, which will undergo detailed geotechnical investigation before construction methods are finalised. Besides, the proposed route passes close to several northern settlements, including Pondavakkam, Thatchoor, Vichoor, Mathur, and Tondiarpet areas, where construction logistics, access planning and mitigation of urban disruption will be critical.