Chennai, Feb 15: Southern Railway has announced that the budget allocation for infrastructure projects and safety works in Tamilnadu for the financial year 2020-21 is Rs 2,812 crore.
According to a press release, the budget is 220 per cent more than the average annual budget outlay of 2009-14 (Rs 879 crore).
The release further mentioned of six doubling projects covering a length of 826 km at a cost of Rs 8,501 crore that includes doubling of Katpadi-Villupuram of length 160.1 km at Rs 1,601 crore, doubling of Salem-Karur-Dindigul of length 160 km at Rs 1,600 crore, doubling of Erode-Karur of length 65 km at Rs 650 crore, doubling of Dharmavaram-Pakala-Katpadi of length 290 km at Rs 2,900 crore, doubling of Hosur-Omalur of length 147 km at Rs 1,470 crore and doubling of Chennai Beach-Chennai Egmore of length 4.3 km at Rs 279.8 crore.
Southern Railway was granted Rs 3,340 crore as budgetary allocation for the year 2020-2021 with a grant of Rs 175 crore towards gauge conversion, Rs 37 crore for traffic facilities and Rs 198 crores for passenger amenities.
According to a statement issued following the budget announcement, elimination of level crossing gates at an amount of Rs 880 crore have been sanctioned for new road over bridges and road under bridges particularly on the golden quadrilateral/diagonal routes (Chennai-Gudur/Chennai- Arakkonam-Renigunta).
Provision of centralised traffic control in connection with modern train control system has been sanctioned at a cost of Rs 148 crore to help in enhancing the line capacity and safety. Harnessing the benefits of technology for safe train operations, provision of indigenous train collision avoidance system on low density railway network has been sanctioned at a cost of Rs 468.9 crore, the release added.