Grand Southern Trunk Road
The Grand Southern Trunk Road or National Highway 45 is one of the busiest highways in southern India. The highway starts from Kathipara Junction, a very busy confluence of five roads in southern Chennai and extends up to Tambaram. It connects Chennai to its airport and to the suburbs. The highway also connects Chennai and Theni in Tamil Nadu. It runs for a total of 472 kilometers. The highway has a 4 lane (2 X 2 each direction) system between Chennai and Tindivanam, though a complete change to 6 lanes is being planned.
During night, the highway experiences a huge volume of traffic. On an average, every night around 10,000 lorries use this highway to reach Chennai.The highway has a number of motels along the entire stretch which provide average food. It is also the road on which most of the fatal accidents frequently happen, mostly due to irresponsible bus drivers and over-speeding lorries colliding head on.
There are few bottlenecks on this highway:
- The Southern Railway (India) line between Chennai and Trichy cuts through this highway in many places resulting in huge pile up of vehicles on both sides of the highway, especially during the night hours.
- In case of any mishaps on the highway, the emergency services get delayed by at least 3 - 5 hours, due to the volume of traffic.
As a counter to this, many infrastructure plans are being proposed for this highway:
- Road over-bridges along the airport road, which can reduce the volume at the beginning of the highway.
- Rail over-bridges over the railway crossings on the highway, which can cut travel time as well as reduce traffic.
- The six-lane system is currently extended between Tindivanam & Tiruchi for a distance of around 225 km (135 miles).
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