Motorists are facing severe hardship due to the Motorists are facing severe dificulty due to the stoppage of road-widening work on Taramani Link Road in Velachery. The widening work, started in 2009, has been dragging on. It has been stopped now due to obstacles faced in the construction of the diversion canal near the junction of the Taramani Link Road and Velachery Main Road.
S. Kumararaja, an office-bearer of the Annai Indira Nagar Residents’ Welfare Association, Velachery, complained that the slow progress of the widening work created traffic jams on Velachery Main and Velachery Bye-Pass Road.
While the State Highways department has been executing road-widening work, the Water Resources Department has been entrusted with the execution of the underground canal project.
The rainwater channel was being constructed to carry surplus water from Veerangal Odai and Velachery Lake to South Buckingham canal, covering the entire stretch of Taramani Link Road.
WRD officials said they had to suspend work for the past 20 days as they had to sort out issues of alignment with the grade separator comprising two layers on the road. According to plans, the grade separator has to come up at the Vijaynagar bus terminus junction.
“We could not shift the 110 kilo volt (KV) underground electricity cable lines entirely. Work has been suspended temporarily due to the mismatch between the canal alignment and the grade separator design,” said an official. Following discussions with the Highways Department and Tangedco, work will resume on Monday, the officials added. Of the four-km channel planned to be constructed, only a total of 400 m remains to be built.
Work is going on in different stretches such as the one near the Velachery bus terminus, near TCS, Nallathambi Street and SRP tools.
Sources in the highways department said that work had not been stopped but would be speeded up. “We are aiming to finish ahead of the monsoon,” said a source.
The department has made a slight change in the alignment of the drain at the Velachery bus terminus junction as a flyover has to come up there.
“The drain work at the junction has been completed and in two weeks, the road will be laid at that point,” the source added. The work has taken over three years due to the presence of underground rocks and heavy traffic.
“We are allowed to work only at night,” said a source. The government order to implement the Rs. 58.15 crore canal project under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission was passed in 2011. “It took almost two years to shift major cables along the road at a cost of Rs.13 crore. The actual construction started only in 2013,” the official recalled.
(Additional reporting by Deepa H. Ramakrishnan)
