In a move to speed up the construction of concrete footpaths between Shanthi Colony and the 100-feet Road near Third Avenue in Anna Nagar, encroachments in the form of name boards placed by commercial establishments on the pavement has been removed. Hawkers have also been evicted from the pavement, say executive engineers of Zone VIII (Anna Nagar) of the Corporation, K.B. Vijayakumar and S. Kalimuthu. Under the project, which is executed by Bus Route Roads (BRR) Department of the Corporation, footpath up to a distance of around 3.87 km has been completed. The remaining portion of work involves 250 metres towards south and 800 metres towards the north.
The stretch between Shanthi Colony and 100-feet Road has more than 300 commercial establishments, mainly textile shops, hotels and mobile phone stores. “Though there is no need to issue any notice to encroachers to vacate government land, we gave them enough time to clear the space but they paid no heed and did not remove their name boards. So, we had to enforce the eviction,” said a Corporation official.
According to City Traffic Police, the stretch between Shanthi Colony and 100-Feet-Road is a extremely busy one as it is a shorter route to reach the main city via Kilpauk on Poonamallee High (PH) Road.
With the ongoing flyover work at Thirumangalam and Metrorail work on 13th Main Road, many vital stretches including the 12th and 18th main roads have been made one-way causing traffic chaos. So, motorists prefer to use lesser known streets that connect key roads including PH Road to reach the main city.
“Footpaths without encroachments ensure safety of pedestrians,” said K. Vasudevan, a motorist from Anna Nagar.
