In the past month, many motorists on some stretches of city roads felt they were unsteady, wobbling and have that constant fear of falling down. The reason: cold milled roads that have had the top layer scraped off for re-laying. This is being done by the Chennai Corporation on several bus route roads to prevent increase of road height.
D. Bharathi, an Injambakkam resident who travels over 100 km on his bike daily, says that the milling has lead to the road having undulated surfaces. “Only certain portions have been scraped. Touching even ordinary speeds of 30-40 km/hr is difficult on these stretches. If you speed up, you will definitely fall,” he says.
Many minor accidents have become regular on these cold-milled stretches as people tend to lose balance. “At night when visibility is considerably lower we notice more people fall down. Even on Sunday night, two people with a small child fell off a scooter on Sardar Patel Road,” says S. Kumuda, who witnessed the accident.
Official sources in the Chennai Corporation said that they will study the possibility of re-laying the stretches on the same day.
