Work on expanding the highway will begin soon as money has been allocated to acquire land.
What’s going to happen? After a six-year break, expanding the 22-km Padi-Thiruninravur stretch of the Chennai-Tirupati Highway will begin again with ₹152 crores released by the highways department to acquire land. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has also started work to turn the 17-km Thiruninravur-Tiruvallur stretch of the highway into four lanes.
- The highway sees traffic congestion during peak hours from the Ambattur Estate junction to the Padi flyover. The four-lane highway becomes two lanes near the Ambattur railway station.
- Part of the work includes converting the two-lane road overbridge into a six-lane stretch near the station. To facilitate the smooth passage of vehicles to Tirupati, the government, in 2007, proposed an upgrade.
Delays & issues: Differences between government agencies in transferring land to the highways department meant the project was abandoned in 2010-11. The number of vehicles using this stretch increased and crossed 1 lakh in 2013. After more delays, the work, scheduled to begin again in 2014, was delayed due to problems in locating boundaries for land parcels.