Roads in Chennai to be upgraded to international standards: officials

Chennai: The Chennai Corporation’s ambitious plans to upgrade four city roads to international standards will receive assistance from the Institute of Remote Sensing (IRS), Anna University, who will GIS map the underground service lines in the project areas.

The project envisages providing separate trenches to different service lines like sewer and drinking water pipes, power cables, telephone and internet cables, in a bid to avoid indiscriminate road cutting episodes, courtesy the various service providing departments.

With GIS mapping set to play a major part in local body’s smart city proposals, officials said that they were in favour of using the handy technology in projects going forward.

“IRS will help us in adjusting the longitudinal slope of roads, correct its camber value and help in identifying space where trenches could be dug. This is because we have come to the realisation that road planning should not only be about providing maximum carriage way space because road alignment also determines the flow of storm water into drains,” an official said.

The corporation’s World Bank-funded project to upgrade four roads, out of the 30 initially proposed, has been stuttering for nearly three years now. While Dr Ambedkar Road, Ashok Nagar first, fourth and 11th avenues were widely reported as the four roads, a senior official told DC that two roads in Anna Nagar now figures among the selection. “The idea is to select roads where it will require minimum intervention,” said the official.

By minimum intervention, the local body means to transform those roads with the fewest number of utility lines underneath.

“Imagine removing a sewer pipeline, we will have to accurately predict the flow in these pipes and then make alternate arrangements so that the commercial establishments and houses in the stretch are not stripped off the services. Inter-department coordination is key,” an official remarked.