All you need to know about the Chennai-Salem Green Highway
The National
Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is expanding the impact of its cluster
highways project Bharatmala Pariyojna
to Southern India, with its upcoming Chennai-Salem Green Highway corridor in
the State of Tamil Nadu (TN).
The NHAI received
a clearance from the Centre and the TN government to publish a notification on the
land acquisition for the new National Highway. The notification, which has been
rolled out, lists all the villages and land pockets the new highway will cut
through.
The Chennai-Salem National
Highway is a green expressway, a new concept for roadway design that integrates
transport functionality and ecological sustainability. The government has
proposed to construct it on 4,693 acres (1,900 hectares) of land in 159
villages across 14 talukas in the Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Krishnagiri,
Dharmapuri, and Salem districts.
According to its Detailed
Project Report, the proposed green highway is 90-m or 256-ft wide and has 8
lanes, including service roads. It will be divided into two segments – NH-179 A
and NH-179 B. These two stretches will offer only 9 entry and exit points,
making it an access-controlled highway.
The new national highway
will run in two directions:
·
From Salem to Coimbatore
(western) with Erode and Tiruppur in between
·
From Salem to Chengalpetu
(eastern) near Chennai, with Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai Kanchipuram in between
From Chengalpetu,
the NH-179 will latch on to the Outer Ring Road at Vandalur that connects to the
harbour. A special flyover will be built to neutralise any new traffic challenges
at the entry point of Chennai that may arise due to the proposed green highway.
The road will
branch out to the access points such as Udhagamandalam, Palani, Mettur, and
hundreds of other towns and villages. All these measures will make the upcoming
NH several times faster and more navigable than the current highways.
Purpose of the New Highway
The NHAI is
undertaking the construction of the Rs-10,000-crore 274-km highway to reduce
the time taken to travel from the port city of Chennai to the city of Salem,
and decongest the existing Chennai-Bangalore and Chennai-Madurai National Highways
that operates between the cities, These highways reportedly operate at around
150 percent of their actual capacity.
Currently, the
Chennai-Bangalore road sees 60,000 PCU (passenger-car units), which is roughly 20,000
PCU more than its capacity. Similarly, the Chennai-Madurai road carries 80,000
PCU to 90,000 PCU against a true capacity of 40,000. This is making the two highways
prone to accidents, with nearly 13,000 persons losing life and limb every year.
The National
Highways Authority of India had earlier measured the feasibility of just
extending the existing highways. However, that would mean demolishing 20,000
houses in the villages.
Environmental Impact
Keeping in mind
the challenges of maintaining an ecological balance, the autonomous highways
agency has proposed to divert less than 10 km of the road strip through the
forest. It also has designed the road to go through a 3-km-long tunnel in a
hillock instead of demolishing or bypassing it.
The land being
acquired for the project will use only a fraction of the total irrigated land,
and the government will compensate the land-owners by giving them an amount
twice or thrice the actual land value. Majority of the land being proposed for
acquisition for the NH 179 are wastelands.
For further information,
these are a few of the numbers for comparing the performance of old and new
highways in terms of time and distance:
Chennai to Kanchipuram
Current
75 km in 1 hr 45 min
to 2 hr
New
75 km in 45 min
Chennai to Tiruvannamalai
Current
180 km in 3 hr to
3.5 hr
New
150 km in 1 hr 30 min
Chennai to Salem
Current
330 km in 6 hr to 7
hr
New
270 km in 3 hr
Chennai to Erode
Current
395 km in 7 hr to 8
hr
New
335 km in 3.3 hr to
4 hr
Chennai to Tiruppur
Current
450 km to 9 hr to
10 hr
New
385 km in 4.3 hr
Chennai to Coimbatore
Current
510 km in 10 hr to
11 hr
New