Upcoming Elevated Expressways To Boost Chennai Suburban Realty

Though Chennai has vast, extended suburban region to support urbanisation and industrialisation, areas in and around south Chennai lack infrastructural facilities which also include faster connectivity from the main city. The civic authorities are now addressing the issue and will soon come up with an elevated expressway that would connect the Chennai international airport and Tambaram with the southern town of Chengalpattu.

Here are other details that might interest you:

Chengalpattu Airport Elevated Road

Planned by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), this 40-km elevated corridor will link the city airport with Chengalpet over the GST Road. To be built at an estimated cost of Rs 2,400 crore, the corridor would have a toll plaza each at the entrance and the exit points. While the stretch of the GST Road between Meenambakkam and the outskirts of Tambaram is maintained by the state highways department, the remaining part comes under the purview of the National Highway Authority Of India (NHAI). The highway would act as a gateway to the south of Tamil Nadu. Though a parallel corridor is being planned by NHAI to connect Tambaram with the area, the airport elevated road is expected to get operational by 2019 as the tenders have already been allotted for the development.

Chengalpattu-Tambaram Elevated Road

The NHAI is planning to build a 30-km, four-lane elevated road between Tambaram and Chengalpattu to decongest the National Highway-45. The construction would begin in 2020, after the tender period for developing four-lane road between the airport and Chengalpattu will be over. Currently, the corridor is proposed till Chengalpattu which will be extended to Tindivanam. Once the elevated corridor is operational, motorists could move smoothly from Tambaram to Chengalpattu without the hindrance of traffic in Perungulathur and Guduvancherry. The existing connectivity through NH-45 opens at 20 locations that also causes a frequent traffic jam. Also, there are nine sub-urban railway stations along the road resulting in pedestrians crisscrossing the highway. The average journey speed of this corridor is 24 kmph, which is far below the standard of a national highway.

How property market will be impacted

The elevated expressways will ease connectivity to the affordable hubs in southern suburbs of Chennai. To start with, let us look at Tambaram. Located on the GST Road, Tambaram serves as a midway to the IT and special economic zone (SEZ) corridors. With a developed job market and effective road connectivity, Tambaram is seen as one of the top ten preferred locations to buy a home in Chennai. Situated along the Trichy-Chennai Highway, Tambaram is sub-divided into West Tambaram and East Tambaram. It is also a busy hotspot owing to its proximity to commercial industries, therefore, attracting real estate investors and homebuyers.

There are 115 projects in West Tambaram, most of which are ready to move and offers investment opportunities starting at Rs 3,000 per sqft. East Tambaram has 71 projects where the properties are offered at Rs 4,000 per sqft onwards. The new connectivity would ease the travel to further south and would make it more preferable as an option for those migrant buyers who seek to visit their home in the suburban region.

Another region that would be benefitted because of the new development is Chengalpattu. With easy, non-stop connectivity to the airport, commercial leasing might see a surge in the area. Currently, companies like Tech Mahindra, Wipro, BMW, Ford, etc. have established their production plants in vicinity. Once the new infrastructure gets operational, the affordability of the area might attract people staying in more expensive and less developed areas such as Perungulathur and Guduvancherry. The average price of an apartment in Chengalpattu is Rs 3,700 per sqft. Other nearby localities such Paranur, JCK Nagar, Abakkam, Singaperumal Koil and Nenmeli offers properties in same price range.