History
Prior to its completion, the East Coast Road mainly consisted of village roads connecting one fishermen hamlet to another. The vital connecting link then was the Old Mahabalipuram Road(SH-49A) till Mahabalipuram. Pondicherry was reached from Chennai through the still existent and busy route via Tambaram, Tindivanam along NH45. The road was built in 1998 by interlinking and improving a series of small village roads that connected the fishing villages along the east coast. The idea was to create infrastructure, facilitate inter-state connectivity and boost tourist movement. But within two years, it started showing signs of distress, adversely affecting the quality of rides and safety of motorists. In 2000, the State government signed a concessionaire agreement with the TNRDC in order to improve the road, at a cost of 60 crore. The 113-km long stretch from Akkarai to Pondicherry, dotted with resorts and beach houses, became a toll facility in March 2002 and was upgraded into a two-lane road from a small winding road passing through 154 villages. In 2010, TNRDC announced that toll collections had reached an all time high at 1.08 crore in December 2009 against the 54.67 lakh collected in April 2002 when toll operations started. In 10th Century AD when the Cholas ruled the whole of Southern India they used this road for Business Supply chain with Southern ports then it was called " Vadugaperuvazhi" in olden day means " The Big way to the North" .
Read more about this topic: East Coast Road
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)