Proposed new bus stand on girivalam route to be provided with underground parking

The accepted site for the proposed Rs 60 crore facility is 6 acres of land near the Esanya mandap on the girivalam path, which ensures that other than buses from Chengam and Bengaluru, vehicles from Vellore, Salem and Chennai do not have to enter the town as they can directly come to the proposed site through the proposed 24 km ring road.

Talking to DT Next, Collector KS Kandasamy said a new bus stand was necessitated by the fact that “the present 30 year old central bus stand is unable to handle the increased volume of traffic.”

“The present terminus is located on 3.50 acres on the Vellore road and has only 50 bus bays. It was expected to handle around 350 buses operating on 35 routes. But, today it is forced to cater to 700 buses daily which go up to 2,000 during the Karthigaideepam festival in November.”

“It is because of the high volume of bus traffic that we are forced to set up more than 15 temporary bus stands during the Deepam festival,” he said. The proposed bus stand will have a total of 200 parking bays and underground parking facility which is expected to the first of its kind in Tamil Nadu, officials added.

When a public hearing on the issue was convened sometime ago, 50 of the 60 people who turned up were real estate dealers each of whom wanted the facility to be located near his area of work “as they anticipated a hike in land prices.” “We expect tenders to be floated shortly after which work will start,” Kandasamy said.