For many years, residents living in neighbourhoods administered by financially weak rural and urban local bodies had a common complaint: Poor roads.
These local bodies with very little scope for revenue generation neither had the financial assistance from the State government nor the technical knowhow to create roads on a par with those in the city.
Things have now changed, for the better. After their merger with Greater Chennai Corporation a few years ago, these village and town panchayats and even municipalities are now getting bitumen topped roads in residential localities that were once dotted with gravel-filled and pothole ridden stretches.
The extended areas of the Chennai Corporation including Tiruvottiyur (Zone 1), Manali (Zone 2) and Madhavaram (Zone 3) in north Chennai; Ambattur (Zone 7) and Valasaravakkam (Zone 11) in west Chennai and Alandur (Zone 12), Perungudi (Zone 14) and Sholinganallur (Zone 15) in south Chennai, have all benefited immensely, thanks to the development in basic urban infrastructure.
Chennai Corporation officials said that ever since the ‘newly’ added areas were merged with the city in 2011, they have managed to corner a lion’s share of funds for road infrastructure works. They said the road infrastructure in these areas were very poor conditions due to shortage of funds at the time of their merger. The interior roads were developed under Grid road development schemes launched in 2012. According to them, 8,000 bitumen topped roads, 10,000 cement concrete roads were planned at an estimated cost of more than Rs. 2,300 crore. The new zones that benefitted the most in the road development schemes were Madhavaram (Rs. 600 crore), Ambattur (Rs. 450 crore) and Perungudi (Rs. 350 crore).
They said the difference between road development in added areas and city limits was their quality. Roads in the newly added areas had to be strengthened and re-laid.
S. Venkatesan of Mahalkshmi Nagar in Kathirvedu (Madhavaram zone), is happy at the pace of road infrastructure development in their locality, compared to earlier, when they were administered by Ambattur Municipality.
Several interior streets coming under the extended areas in Kathivakkam, Tiruvottiyur, Ambattur, Korattur, Maduravoyal, Valasaravakkam, Mugalivakkam, Nanganallur, Ullagaram-Puzhithivakkam, Madipakkam, Kottivakkam, Injambakkam and Okkiyam Thoriapakkam and others have been paved with new roads.
The civic body has covered almost 80 per cent of the 33,300 interior roads in the city, which includes 3,500 concrete roads. Before the extension of the city there were nearly 12,000 roads, the official said.
