Five years on, 1,200m flyover at Velachery to open today

Five years on, 1,200m flyover at Velachery to open today

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:01.11.2021

The long-delayed flyover at Vijayanagar junction connecting the road from Taramani with the Velacherry by-pass will be opened to the public by chief minister M K Stalin on Monday.

Work on the 1,200m flyover began in 2016 and it took five years and cost ₹186 crore to complete. State highways department officials said various factors contributed to the delay. To begin with the project got stuck over land acquisition. A section of people moved court and only in June last year, during the lockdown period, did the highways department get the go-ahead from the court, said an official.

The flyover has a two-lane carriage way with a width of 7.5 metres. This means only one-way traffic can be allowed. Similar is the size of the second arm, connecting Velacherry with Pallikaranai. This is also planned as flyover with one way traffic, said the official.

A local resident S Kumara Raja said about 11,500 sqft of land was needed to take up the flyover construction. With the court issuing a stay on the work, the original plan to complete it by within 24 months fell through.

Then the giant sewer line from the nearby residential areas to the Perungudi treatment plant became another hurdle, which needed to be realigned. This work took nearly a year. When these works were completed, the lockdown halted work.

The second arm of the flyover, connecting Velacherry to Pallikaranai, measuring 640 metres is expected to be ready by this yearend.

Kumara Raja said both arms could only handle oneway traffic and rued that they had not been better planned.

LONG DUE: Work on the 1,200-metre-long flyover began in 2016