Chennaites may enjoy a roller-coaster ride on board the metro rail on the busy GST Road near the airport.
In less than two years, the metro rail would run underground and climb a ramp for a stretch of 500 meters starting from OTA to the airport, giving passengers the feeling of being on a roller coaster.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has even transferred its land to the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), which hopes to fasttrack work on the OTA-airport stretch.
There was a brief delay in finalising the design of the stretch, as AAI was concerned over the presence of any structure within 150 meters on either side of the runway.
Metro structures are about 16 meters high and hence the new design that resembles a roller coaster, CMRL officials told Deccan Chronicle.
The dive underground would start immediately after OTA, close to where the Chennai airport runway starts. The track would climb out through a ramp near the cargo handling terminus, CMRL officials pointed out.
A new compound wall realigning the airport boundary along GST Road has already been constructed within the existing campus from OTA towards the airport and the tube of the metro would pass through the passage between the compound wall and edge of the main road outside.
As of now, 34 of the total 42 soil investigation boreholes have been completed on the stretch. The St Thomas Mount-airport stretch of metro rail has been scheduled for commissioning by December 2014.