A few weeks ago, the smooth surface of the Jawaharlal Nehru Road was broken up and this barricade came around it. That is the first visible indication of the Chennai Metro project having begun in earnest. Expected to take six years to complete, the project is estimated at over USD 3 billion.
Though they say the first phase - from Teynampet to the airport - will be operational by 2011, there is no sign of any work having begun at either of those ends!
Heading back into the city from the airport this morning, we took a different route over the grade separator at Kathipara. This time around, with all the links at Kathipara fully functional, we could actually go over towards Jawaharlal Nehru road, rather than ducking under, as we did six months ago.
Now that all the construction debris is hidden from view, it is a nice sight for all the corporate types to see - a swank interchange, one arm of which leads you to a set of rather techie looking buildings. And all those traffic holdups as you enter the city, they're now a dim memory of the past!
If you come into Chennai by air, your drive to the city will almost invariably face a bottleneck at the Kathipara junction. That's the point where the Grand Southern Trunk Road, Mount Poonamallee Road and the Jawaharlal Nehru Road meet up. But the bottleneck is not just about traffic; the grade separator at this junction, though nearly complete, currently contributes to a small part of the holdup.
A small part, now that the free-flow link between JN Road and GST Road has been open for a month. This photo was taken when going under that link, towards JN Road. In less than a year, those mounds of earth would have been replaced by greenery; all the links are expected to be operational before April 2009. And then, one can whiz through from the airport into the city in no time at all!
(Oh, yes. Traffic volume will still be a factor in your whizzing.) 
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