National Highway 544, commonly referred to as NH 544, is a 340 km (210 mi) long highway connecting the city of Salem to Kochi city in southern India. The highway runs through the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, connecting various important cities and towns such as Salem, Coimbatore, Palakkad, Thrissur and Kochi.
It is a spur of National Highway 44, which forms the North South Corridor of the National Highway network of India.It is passing south of coimbatore. It was formerly designated National Highway 47.
A Summer Road Trip on Mannuthy – Walayar Highway – VIDEO
The stretch between the industrial city of Coimbatore and the port city of Kochi is one of the busiest in the Indian Highway system. Most of the traffic in this stretch consists of trucks carrying consumer goods, construction materials, container lorries (bound for Port of Kochi) and passenger vehicles.
This is the National Highway that experiences the highest volume of night traffic in India. On an average, over 10,000 lorries use this highway to travel between Coimbatore and Kochi every night.The highway has several motels and restaurants along the entire stretch.
Though the Government of India is investing in widening National Highways, the stretch from Mannuthy (in Thrissur District) to Edappaly (in Kochi City) is almost completely four-laned along the bypass to Kochi city. However, the junction at Edappally with NH 66 which runs to Panvel , Navi Mumbai is a very congested one.
The widening of Chengapalli-Walayar stretch of the North–South and East–West Corridor is in process. Of this, the first stretch from Chengapalli to Nillambur in Coimbatore (42.705km), where it would touch the already widened Coimbatore bypass, would facilitate six-lane traffic while the 12 km segment from Madukkarai , Coimbatore to Walayar would be four-lane.
Six laning from Chengapalli starts from the Coimbatore bypass of NH-544 and four lane from Madukkarai on the end of Coimbatore Bypass to Tamil Nadu-Kerala border up to Walayar of NH-544 in the State of Tamil Nadu.