Soon, driving through the Lanka Corner railway underpass during or after rain may not be difficult as the Coimbatore Corporation has planned to reduce inundation.
Sources in the civic body said that it decided to take up the work after the last summer showers where traffic in that part of the city was hit as it always does after a good rain. The civil society’s intervention only helped as a few engineers and architects had come forward to study and suggest solutions.
The Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore’s honorary secretary R. Raveendran said that the civil society wanted the corporation to reduce inundation at the junction because it did not augur well for the city to continue to have such problem when it had been declared a Smart City.
The association wanted the corporation to take up the work because it wanted the rainwater to to go directly to Valangulam Tank, without being pumped from the junction.
Responding to the suggestion, corporation engineers studied the problem, the sources said and added that they had learnt that the drain near the junction carried water from Ramnagar, Gandhinagar and neighbouring areas and that its width had narrowed southwards.
The width and depth of the drain in Gandhipuram, on Dr. Nanjappa Road and till the Coimbatore Collectorate was 4 ft and 6ft respectively but as it neared the State Bank of India and the Coimbatore Railway Junction it narrowed down to 2ft.
This reduction in width pushed water on to the road as the drain would not hold the rain water, the sources said and added that the corporation would redesign the drain southwards from State Bank of India till Valangulam Tank.
Arun Prasad, architect, who has been associated with the project, said that the civil society’s suggestion to the corporation was to design and construct drains on Big Bazaar Street, Trichy Road and State Bank of India Road in such a way that they tapped the water before the roads sloped to the junction.
This would reduce the inundation in the junction and the motor there could pump out the water in very shot time.
At present, the motor took 45 minutes to more than an hour to drain out the water from the junction, Mr. Raveendran said.
Corporation sources said that once the civic body finalised the plan, it would send the proposal to the Highways Department for permission to construct across the Trichy Road.
