Chennai Metro Update: The completion deadline for six stations on the Arcot Road stretch of Chennai Metro Phase II (Poonamallee-Vadapalani/Porur-Vadapalani corridor) has been pushed to March 2027.
Chennai Metro Rail has failed to complete the six stations nearly ten months past the deadline, The Hindu reported. The six affected stations are Alapakkam, Karambakkam, Valasaravakkam, Alwarthirunagar, Saligramam Warehouse and Saligramam.
The delay has hit thousands of commuters in Alapakkam, Virugambakkam, Valasaravakkam and Saligramam, who cannot access stations closer to their homes despite metro services running on Arcot Road.
At present, platform work is about 95 per cent complete. Work is now focused on concourses, entry/exit structures and system integration.
According to The Hindu, citing sources, Chennai Metro Rail will seek an extension of the 'provisional authorisation' for the Porur-Vadapalani stretch from the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS).
The CRS had cleared the Poonamallee-Porur stretch with no speed restrictions but granted only provisional authorisation for Porur-Vadapalani, with trains in manual mode and speed capped at 40 kmph.
In a letter issued in May, the CRS said, “After completion of all the pending works, CMRL shall approach this office for regular authorisation, as this provisional authorisation is only up to October 31, 2026.”
The Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) cited reasons for the delay, saying it faced a severe labour shortage owing to elections from March till June this year. Another reason is engineering challenges, which also proved demanding, particularly on the double-decker corridor where the metro's elevated structures for Corridors 4 and 5 run side by side.
It said building the elevated concourses and platforms in such a tight space has required careful planning and sequencing, and the work has taken longer than initially projected.
“But after that, the worker strength has substantially increased, and the work has been under way in full swing. We also had to work under a lot of challenging conditions. " It was very tough to construct the platform and concourse between Alapakkam and Alwarthirunagar, since it is a double-decker corridor (both corridor 4 and corridor 5 of the phase II network run parallelly, one over the other),” an official said.
“Now, nearly 95 per cent of the work on building the platforms of these stations is over. We are expediting the work to finish the concourse and the entry/exit structures of these stations,” the official added.
While construction work is expected to end by January next year, signalling will take two more months, another official said.
“But from our estimate, it is going to be pretty difficult to complete the signalling work even by March 2027. The opening of these six stations is likely to get delayed even further," he added.