Chairman of Chennai Port Trust (CPT), Sunil Paliwal, told the media that tenders would be floated for Port-Maduravoyal Elevated Corridor by the end of this month and awarded before September, with an estimated project cost of Rs 5,800 crore.
The pillars for the project were already constructed along Koyambedu-Maduravoyal Road and will be utilised. Those along the Cooum river alignment will be demolished as the design has been tweaked.
The estimated time for the project is 30 months. CPT has planned to rope in II-M to study the movement of vehicles on the interior roads.
Paliwal said that the port is utilising only around 60% of the total cargo handling capacity since the port is located inside the city. The efforts to handle more container cargo will increase congestion. For reducing pollution, even the dusty cargo is now handled only at Kamarajar Port Limited (KPL). After completing the project, it will help CPT to achieve further growth.
According to data, the CPL and KPL have already registered a 25% growth in handling cargo traffic in 2021-22, compared to 2020. Together, these ports handled around 87 million metric tonnes of cargo traffic this year. It is the highest net surplus of Rs 794 crore for CPL in the last 11 years.