| Grand Western Trunk Road, Poonamallee High Road, State Highway Urban 86 | |
 Poonamallee High Road inPark Town (2008) | |
 Interactive map of EVR Periyar Salai | |
| Namesake | EVR Periyar |
|---|---|
| Maintained by | Highways and Minor Ports Department Corporation of Chennai |
| Length | 8.7 mi (14.0 km) The 8.7-mile stretch refers to the stretch from Muthuswamy Bridge nearMadras Medical College atPark Town in the east to theMaduravoyal Junction in the west. The stretch continues further west to a national highway (NH4). |
| Coordinates | 13°04′29″N80°13′11″E / 13.0746°N 80.2198°E /13.0746; 80.2198 |
| East end | Muthuswamy Bridge nearMadras Medical College atPark Town,Chennai |
| West end | Maduravoyal bypass junction,Chennai |
EVR Periyar Salai (SHU 86)(EVR High Road),[1] earlier known asPoonamallee High Road(NH 48) and originally theGrand Western Trunk Road, is an arterial road inChennai,India. It is the longest road in Chennai. Running from east to west, the 14-kilometre (8.7 mi) road starts at Muthuswamy Bridge nearMadras Medical College atPark Town and ends nearMaduravoyal Junction viaKilpauk,Aminjikarai,Anna Nagar Arch,Arumbakkam,Koyambedu. It further continues west towardsPoonamallee and traverses the towns ofSriperumbudur,Walajapet, andRanipet.
The road, particularly along its eastern end, has some of the most impressive civic institutions andheritage structures of the city, including theRipon Building (the seat of civic body), theVictoria Public Hall (the city's Town Hall), theCentral train station, theMoore Market (razed in the late 20th century),Madras Medical College, andSt Andrew's Kirk.
It connects two of the vital transport installations of the city,Chennai Central railway station and theCMBT. The road has more hospitals than any other roads in the city and is popularly known as the city's 'Med street'. The road is named after the noted social activist and politicianPeriyar E. V. Ramasamy.[2]
The road was originally known as Grand Western Trunk (GWT) Road and was built in the 1850s by the then British government.[3] The road was numbered asNH4 and was locally known as the Poonamallee High Road.[3] Originally built to connectFort St. George to a British military installation some 23 kilometers west of the city, it remained the city's longest road.
When the city of Madras became the most prominent port city, arterial roads emerged from the city's center traversing in all the three directions. The roads that traversed north, west and south were respectively named the Grand Northern Trunk (GNT) Road, the Grand Western Trunk (GWT) Road, and the Grand Southern Trunk (GST) Road. The GNT Road eventually became the Chennai–Kolkata Highway, the GWT Road became the Chennai–Mumbai Highway (NH4), and the GST Road became the Chennai–Kanyakumari Highway (NH45). The stretches of these road within the city came to be known asWall Tax Road, Poonamallee High Road, andMount Road, respectively.[3]
EVR Periyar Salai is six metres (20 ft) wide in most stretches, except for the stretch betweenKoyambedu andAnna Nagar Arch, which has only four lanes.[4] The width of the road varies from two to nine lanes or from 12 to 35 metres (39 to 115 ft). The road narrows at the stretches betweenRipon Building andGovernment Fine Arts College,Pachaiyappa's College and Shenoy Nagar junction, andDG Vaishnav College and Koyambedu. The road has not been widened since the 1980s.[5] The road is used by more than 185,000 vehicles every day. Heavy containers from and to theChennai Port use this road at night, making it one of the heavily worn roads of the city and necessitating regular re-laying.[6] As of 2008, about 11,000 passenger cars cross any given point of the road every hour. As of 2013, this has been projected to 19,000 passenger cars, more than five times the designed capacity of the road.[5]
In 2011, the bridge acrossCooum River at Aminjikkarai was widened at a cost of₹ 69 million.[citation needed]
In 2013, a new and wider bridge on the road across the Cooum river nearAmpa Skywalk was planned at an estimated cost of₹ 80 million under the Chennai Metropolitan Development Programme (CMDP). The 47-m-long bridge with 10 lanes, which will be the third "high-level bridge" over the river, will be broader than the road with 6 lanes. The bridge, at road level, will be at a height of 9.5 m from the riverbed. The bridge will have the same design as the old one abutting it, with two abutments and two piers.[7]
With several hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and diagnostic laboratories dotting its entire length, EVR Periyar Salai is often called Chennai's 'med street', similar toLondon'sHarley Street. The establishment of two of the major government-run hospitals, theRajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and theKilpauk Medical College and Hospital, remains a significant reason behind the road's morphing into a medical destination. The stretch is also home to Pandalai Nursing Home, one of the earliest private hospitals in the city, established in 1932, prior to which all hospitals were run by either the British or missionaries. Many private healthcare centres were opened since then, such asB M Sundaravadanan Nursing Home in 1934 and Ramarau Polyclinic in 1938, which had one of the earliest X-ray units. The stretch also has about 25 standalone pharmacies.[8]
As of 2014, the arterial stretch carries around 250,000 vehicles a day, of which two-wheelers constituted 60 percent, cars 30 percent, and buses and other heavy vehicles the remaining.[9]
Major landmarks dotting the road include the following:
In May 2013, a 300-m stretch of the road at Shenoy Nagar near Aminjikarai which acted as a bottleneck was widened, following a Madras High Court ruling. Officials of the state highways department cleared the encroachments that had reduced the width of the road.[10]
In the early 2000s,Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) conceived an idea of a 6.5-km stretch connecting the two arterial stretches of Poonamallee High Road andAnna Salai in the city. The idea is to create a traffic corridor connecting Anna Salai and Poonamallee High Road through the congested neighbourhoods of Chetpet, Nungambakkam and T. Nagar. In 2014, the Corporation modified the original alignment to create two corridors, namely, a 3.5-km stretch from Anna Salai to Mahalingapuram and a 3-km flyover connecting Thirumalai Pillai Road and Poonamallee High Road (covering five traffic bottlenecks in Chetpet junction, Sterling Road junction, Tank Bund Road junctions and Valluvar Kottam High Road junction).[11]
In 2014, the highways department fixed the alignment of a 5.18-km-long, 4-laned elevated corridor that will take off at Raja Muthiah Salai, near Ripon Buildings, and descend near Pulla Reddy Avenue inShenoy Nagar. The project has been estimated to cost₹4,500 million.[9]
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