Madhavaram-Taramani underground stretch on corridor 3 to be taken up first.

Chennai Metro plans to begin work on its phase II project, spanning across 118.9 km, by the middle of next year.

Phase II comprises three corridors — corridor 3 from Madhavaram to SIPCOT; corridor 4 from Lighthouse to Poonamallee; and corridor 5 from Madhavaram to Sholinganallur. Of these, the 52-km stretch between Madhavaram and Taramani, a part of corridor 3, will be taken up first. It passes through areas like Purasawalkam, Sterling Road and Mylapore.

The reason for picking a part of corridor 3 to start construction is because the whole stretch is underground and hence will consume more time to build; beyond this point, from Taramani till Siruseri, the corridor is elevated and will be taken up later.

“The tunnelling in the city is quite time consuming and hence we want to begin in this stretch. Also, Madhavaram is the place where a huge depot will be located and where maintenance and cleaning of trains will be done; so, we wanted to build that early too,” an official said. Tenders will be called for civil work early next year and, in about 3-4 months, the preliminary construction work too will start, he added.

The stretch from Madhavaram to CMBT will have eleven elevated stations and five underground stations and hence work on it will begin a few months after corridor 3.

No contract bunching

One significant difference between phase I and phase II is that one contractor may not get several stations. In phase I, Gammon India and CCCL got a huge number of stations and hence when their contract was terminated, the work on a long stretch came to a grinding halt.

“We are working out a combination on how to award the station contracts; in some areas, there will be 2-3 stations; in others, there may be 3-4 stations. The idea is to ensure that a large portion of work goes unaffected, if the contractor lands in trouble or fails to meet deadlines” the official added.