Was visiting a friend in Porur Katupakkam. Visiting the place after a decade. While the road has been broadened, the whole stretch has a whole lot of retail options now including almost all major car dealerships, the basics of a pavement, again eludes the Chennai corp.
The cost of the metro from porur to Poonamallee is approx ₹350 crores per KM.
Cost of laying a pavement and a cycle track (and this entire 5 km stretch till the Vadapalani junction is broad enough to accommodate a pavement + cycle track) is 4.5 cr / km combined.
We can fund a metro easy but basic garbage clearance, pavements is apparently beyond us.
The entire stretch from Katupakkam till the Vadapalani junction has working pavements only outside MGR hospital. That's maybe 1 km in a 10 km stretch. The rest is just dusty side roads.
This is not a tier 2 or 3 town, this is not even some distant far flung suburb.
This is Ambattur industrial estate, it generates employment for 200,000 people. Has an annual turn over of ₹ 15,000 crore of which ₹ 3,500 cr is exports.
It generates income taxes, CGST, SGST, excise and duties. It's support ecosystem (truckers, cleaners, security staff etc) must run into the 10's of thousands.
It's also an emerging residential real estate hub. The avg per sq in a newer condo is ₹7,500 / 8,000.
Yet it looks like a war torn dystopia. Has ZERO pavements though 10's of thousands of workers walk from railway stations / bus stops to their factori s and back.
Large parts of it lack functioning street lights.
Filthy open sewers, even spotted a few fat pigs in them, cattle, stray dogs, dust everywhere, garbage garbage garbage as far as the eye can see.