IT Corridor Road project

[R2IChennai]

Originally Posted by suniil

i'll PM you in a while, as this is off-topic

You might as well post it here, as there are so many interests
I am sure mods wont find it inapporpriate.

[gadgetfreak]

Guys do you have any idea of the revised date of completion for the Kathipara Grade Saperators?? Ihope they complete it soon...

[MaduraiSelvam]

Originally Posted by gadgetfreak

Guys do you have any idea of the revised date of completion for the Kathipara Grade Saperators?? Ihope they complete it soon...

When i was there during March and April 1st week, it was in a state far from completion. I would doubt if it will be ready by now.

[Subra]

http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/su...nsight&rLink=0

How passionate can one get about a road ? Highways like the Grand Trunk Road have inspired quite a few travelogues. But an entire tome dedicated to the building of a road and that too a comparatively very short stretch of road? Probably for the first time in India, Sabina Narayanan and K Malmarugan have attempted such an effort, and the result is the story of how the Old Mahablipuram Road connecting Chennai and the tourist centre of Mahabalipuram (or Mamallapuram) is being converted into the IT Expressway.

The Old Mahabalipuram Road or OMR is just a 45 km stretch dotted with a few sleepy little villages, a small industrial cluster and a handful of private engineering colleges that could get land at low prices so far out of the city. The road became a poor cousin to the East Coast Road, a six-lane highway linking Chennai-Mahabalipuram-Pondicherry (now Pudhucheri) .

But in the last five years,OMR has gone through a transformation which has a lot to do with the transformation of Chennai itself. It has metamorphosed from a conservative city, with a strong manufacturing base to a strong rival to Bangalore as the country's information technology (IT) hub. As more and more IT majors started setting up shop in Chennai, they felt the need to move out of the city in search of cheap real estate, and what better place than the umpteen villages along the OMR? The IT industry and CII were also calling for the improvement of the IT Corridor (as OMR started being referred to as) on a priority basis following a few accidents in which IT professionals and foreign clients of IT industries were seriously injured. The setting up of the TIDEL Park, the first major IT Park by the state owned Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) on this road too provided the required urgency to upgrade a 20 km stretch of this road between Adyar and Siruseri, where the state government is setting up another major IT park..

The IT industry

The task naturally fell on Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC) , a joint venture of TIDCO and Infrastructure Leasing and Finance (ILF &S), which had developed the East Coast Road, which in turn set up a special purpose vehicle IT Expressway Limited (ITEL) to execute the project.

Thus began the dream project, as a public private initiative,with which Narayanan and Malmarugan were associated, with the then TNRDC's Chief Executive Officer Rohit Modi as the guiding force.

“The East Coast Road had already become a model for highways. We wanted to go beyond that not only in engineering terms but also in the way the whole project was conceived and executed. We wanted it to the template for all future IT corridors in the country,” Modi said.

It was as an attempt to achieve just that, Narayanan and Malmarugan set about chronicling the The Evolution of Integrated Urban Facility — The IT Corridor Story, which is half-way between a case study and a coffee table book.

What was conceived was something the country has not seen before. A dual three-lane main carriageway, a central median dotted with plants and trees, two service lanes and separate lanes for non-motorised vehicles, two planter strips and a pedestrian footpath. Thrown in is a unique feature-walkthrough service ducts/trenches that convey utility lines like power and telephone cables to eliminate that bane of Indian roads — cutting or digging for maintenance or repairs."Effectively, it will be a 10-lane highway with holistic aesthetic and environmentally sound infrastructure,” say Narayanan and Malmarugan.

A drive down the three kilometre first leg of the IT Expressway from Adyar to TIDEL Park, which was opened to traffic without much fanfare last November provides a taste of the things to come. This stretch has been converted into a virtual open air art gallery, with more than a dozen artists chipping in with abstract art, murals and sculptures to liven up the walls of the institutions on one side of the Expressway. Starting with Elango's statue of 'Five Madurai women', to Krishnaswamy's contemporary abstract art; Asma Menon's mural to works of Palaniappan, Sailesh and Shalini Biswas, all from Chennai, the list goes on.

With the Expressway being intersected by other major roads at six locations, it has been conceptualised to have six junctions, five of them representing the elements of nature — fire, water, space, earth and wind — and the sixth, time, with massive works of art representing each of them.

But it is just not the engineering aspect of the Expressway that Narayanan and Malmarugan have sought to present in their book, but the entire story behind the concept and execution of the project, which has perhaps many firsts to its credit. To quote them, “born as an add-on to the East Coast Road (ECR) project, it evolved from a four laning project to its present form as an Integrated Urban Facility.”

Two aspects that the authors try to focus on and would like to present as models for all future IT Corridor projects in the country are the public-private participation (PPP) adopted by TNRDC amd the land acquisition, relocation, rehabilitation and reconstruction issues.

Though far from complete, the IT Expressway has already been proving to be a textbook case of land acquisition and rehabilitation and reconstruction of the persons and structures affected . The entire process of land acquisition went off with hardly any protests from locals, though the TNRDC had to face 104 cases in the Madras High Court, each of which went in its favour. To rehabilitate small traders, whose shops came under the bulldozer, a market has been constructed, and three more are in the pipeline. Three schools were also reconstructed.

“But by far the biggest challenge was the fact that there were 19 temples, two mosques and one church on the Expressway alignment. We were worried about the religious implications of the demolition of these places of worship. So we first went about convincing the locals on the need to relocate these structures, involved them in selecting alternate sites, and then went about construction of the temples and mosques at the new locations. We even hired the services of stapathis from the state Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board for the temples," says Narayanan.

On the project implementation module also, the ITEL has broken new grounds. Instead of adopting the regular concession agreement model of PPP as is the practice for execution of such projects, ITEL signed a Project and Development Agreement with the Tamil Nadu government so that there will not be any dividend pay-out on the money being pumped in as equity. Instead the surplus will be ploughed back into the IT Corridor.

“The PDA framework enables the governments to take up large infrastructure projects which are not initially amenable for private equity investments…The IT Corridor's PDA model has already been upscaled and adopted for the Rajasthan Mega Highways Project. Thus the scalability and adaptability of the model has already been proved,” say the authors.

But as the authors themselves point out in a whole chapter devoted to implementation blues, even this model is not foolproof against interference, particularly of the political variety, which can kill a project, as it almost did in this case. In fact, they chronicle even the manner in which TNRDC CEO Rohit Modi was slighted and how he tendered his resignation.

However, a few nagging questions remain. The construction of the Expressway is way behind its schedule. The first three km stretch was compeleted only in October last year. And then the work came to a standstill for nearly six months, only to pick up pace again in March this year. The new target date for completion of the main carriageway is August this year. But Modi, Narayanan and Malmarugan are all out of the project and the TNRDC itself. So are most of the other top members of the core of 'Team TNRDC', as the author describes them.

Did the change of guard at the political leadership in the state, which had virtually revived the project that was entangled in unseemly squabble and got the three km stage one ready, have anything to do with it ?

Also, with the project yet to be completed, wasn't it premature for the authors to celebrate what they envisioned as a work of art ? Or is there a deeper message that they want to convey?

[ferrari_fan]

nice article..

The road became a poor cousin to the East Coast Road, a six-lane highway linking Chennai-Mahabalipuram-Pondicherry (now Pudhucheri) .

where they heard that ECR is a 6-lane highway beats me..

[gadgetfreak]

Originally Posted by MaduraiSelvam

When i was there during March and April 1st week, it was in a state far from completion. I would doubt if it will be ready by now.

Hmmm welll the work will still go on for another year or more according to my calculations... but the work sure did gain some momentum and things are going on... Lets see how long...

[PlaneMad]

Aerial shot of ECR buckingham canal and OMR. Is the highway on the same alignment or do they plan to smooth out those curves?
You can see the high res pics at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im...i_aerial_3.jpg

[gadgetfreak]

Gr8 pics Plane Mad!!! But sorry I have no idea as to what they are upto!!

[ferrari_fan]

it's the same alignment i think.. at any rate, the sharp right-left kink towards the bottom of the first pic continues to be that way..

[gadgetfreak]

Its hectic to travel through the road now-a-days but all for good... Road work is on and its good to see that more area is being covered this time.... I saw road work going on near accenture(I guess), some place that comes just before Infosys Shols and after the small bridge... Road was being laid on one side of the road.. I hope many of you would have noticed it... Can anyone shed some light on this as I dont know that area properly...

[ferrari_fan]

yes indeed - the area just after the bridge that you're talking about is called Karapakkam btw..

but the parts near Infy campus (which is 3-4 kms from Karapakkam) have been in pretty much that same state for over 6 months now.. the real construction activity is on the northern parts of the road at the moment..

[gadgetfreak]

thankx Ferrarifan... thats where Thankavelu Engg Coll is.. right?? By the way what strategies are they following to curb the morining traffic near the prince infocity, maples(I guess that area is called Perungudi)??

And what about the Kathipara Junctions new deadline???... Now that land had been acquired....how much more time do they need??

[ferrari_fan]

yes, that's is where Thangavelu coll is..

and Prince Infocity and Maples are in Kandanchavadi which is the locality just before Perungudi..

[gadgetfreak]

oh gr8....so wat about the Kathipara deadline?? I'm sure some person over here would know the answer for my question...

[PlaneMad]

i dont think theres been an official announcement yet. Btw, i think they finally started earthworks for the ramp on IRR side. No progress on GST road yet.

[yaduruli]

Any update on a small bridege on thoraipakkam -palavaram rd.it was under-constrution for years..


TAMBARAM : Work on a grade separator in Pallikaranai at the intersection of Velachery Main Road and Pallavaram - Thoraipakkam Radial Road will be taken up after Local Administration Minister M. K. Stalin lays the foundation stone at a function on Saturday.

The Minister would be taking part in a function in Tambaram on that day and he would lay the foundation for a road overbridge at Tambaram and for the Pallikaranai grade separator. Highways Minister Vellakoil Saminathan visited Tambaram last week to finalise the function venue.

While the bridge at Tambaram is estimated to cost Rs. 34 crore, Rs. 14 crore is to be spent on the Pallikaranai grade separator.

Mr. Saminathan announced the construction of this project in February after an inspection of Pallikaranai, where work on minor bridges was in progress.

As per the design, vehicles towards Pallikaranai and Velachery would ply on the bridge, while motorists proceeding to Pallavaram and Thoraipakkam would be using the road beneath, according to senior engineers of the Highways Department

[Naga_Solidus]

Does anyone have a render of the Pallikaranai grade seperator?

[Sathisht77]

[QUOTE=yaduruli;12981077]Any update on a small bridege on thoraipakkam -palavaram rd.it was under-constrution for years..
TAMBARAM : Work on a grade separator in Pallikaranai at the intersection of Velachery Main Road and Pallavaram - Thoraipakkam Radial Road will be taken up after Local Administration Minister M. K. Stalin lays the foundation stone at a function on Saturday.


We seem to have "foundation stone" functions all the time. But not one project is completing on time. Leave completion on time, they seem to be projects for eternity..never to be complete. I feel very sad tracking the progress of IT expressway, the grade separator projects etc.

[ferrari_fan]

well, this flyover is a brand new project, so at least so far there aren't any delays on it.. heck, they haven't even given a timeframe for completion..

@ Naga : it's just a simple 2-lane flyover across a junction.. i doubt we'll get a render of this one..

[gadgetfreak]

Hmmm what a way to keep ourselves happy!!!

Keep looking at the renders and forget the deadlines...Hmmmm donno when all the projects would end... Such a sad situation!!