Integrated Transportation Planning for a Highway Town: A Case Study of Sattur Municipality, Virudhunagar District, Tamil Nadu

Small highway towns in Tamil Nadu absorb a disproportionate share of through traffic relative to their municipal road inventory, producing chronic congestion, unsafe pedestrian conditions and declining public-transport utility in the historic core. This paper presents an integrated transportation planning study of Sattur Municipality in Virudhunagar District, a compact second-grade municipality of about 3.83 sq. km lying on National Highway 44 (formerly NH-7) and on the Madurai–Kanyakumari broad-gauge railway. The town functions as a taluk headquarters, a cottage-industry cluster (match frames, stainless-steel tongue cleaners and related light manufacturing) and a service centre for surrounding villages along the Vaippar river. Primary investigations conducted in December 2025 comprised a household interview survey of 612 households, classified traffic volume counts at six critical locations, 248 onboard public-transport interviews, a parking inventory of six activity clusters, and pedestrian counts at three conflict points. Two-wheelers account for 38.4 per cent of person-trips; walking remains significant at 18.6 per cent; bus and auto-rickshaw together serve 28.3 per cent. Peak-hour volumes on the NH-44 / bus-stand junction reach 3,125 passenger car units (PCU) in the evening peak, well above the practical capacity of a two-lane urban carriageway. Public-transport users rate last-mile access and passenger information below 2.3 on a five-point scale. Observed parking demand on the main road frontage exceeds authorised supply by 86 per cent. The paper diagnoses the town as a classic “highway-bisected municipality”: a high-speed regional corridor cuts the settlement, the bus stand and railway station sit adjacent in a constrained core, and internal streets lack hierarchy, footpaths and organised parking. A three-horizon strategy is proposed: short-term traffic management and parking regulation; medium-term junction geometrics, bus-stand rationalisation and a local mini-bus / e-auto circuit; and long-term completion of a functional inner ring, freight bypass discipline and integration with district electric-bus programmes. Indicative capital requirement for the first eight years is placed at Rs. 28.6 crore in 2026 prices. The findings are transferable to other NH-44 corridor towns of similar size in southern Tamil Nadu.