For a fortnight now, motorists travelling between Koyembedu and Maduravoyal on the Poonamallee High (PH) Road have been encountering strange objects on the road.
Here are some of them: logs of dry palm trees, unused concrete boulders, steel barricades and concrete slabs. These objects have been purposefully placed in the middle of the road – to serve as a median. The city traffic police have done this as a stop gap arrangement to prevent accidents. The state highways department, the executive agency maintaining the stretch, is expected to construct a permanent median there.
“Using discarded materials such as these is a novel idea. Also, it helps motorists on either side of the stretch to travel safely without the fear that someone would jump from the opposite lane, especially at night,” said K.Vinoth Kumar, a motorist from Anna Nagar.
The stretch is a nightmare for both motorists and traffic cops, who man the five-km stretch between Koyembedu and Maduravoyal. Every day, more than one lakh vehicles, especially container lorries and cargo trucks from manufacturing units at Irunkattukottai and Sriperambudur, use the stretch to reach the Chennai port, especially between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. During the day, hundreds of MTC buses and those belonging to educational institution take the P.H. Road to reach the main city. With a good number of vehicles found at any given hour, PH Road is easily among the busiest stretches in the city. In fact, according to police sources, it remains the second most accident-prone stretch in the city after Anna Salai. At present, work on the Rs. 1,800-crore Chennai Port- Maduravoyal Elevated Corridor has not re-started due to an objection raised by the Public Works Department. As a result, huge concrete boulders and concrete slabs made for the project remain unused at the centre of the stretch near the work site. These materials not only get exposed to the elements but also turn dangerous for motorists when they hit them at night. . Further, pedestrians and motorists, who come from the street lanes along PH Road, cross the stretch abruptly taking the motorists by surprise. “A permanent median cannot be created until the elevated expressway project is completed. At the same time, we have to prevent accidents on the stretch. So, we came up with this idea, which does not involve much investment,” said a police officer.
