On April 11, 2012, when an 8.6-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean, a frisson of fear went through the IT Corridor, forcing huge software parks to order their techies out, all at once. With the spectre of a tsunami casting a shadow over it, the huge IT workforce collectively hit the road around 4 pm. Around that time, I was rushing into the locality, worried about the safety of my family in Sholinganallur, and found myself swimming through a sea of vehicles.
It’s in such moments that one grasps the seriousness of the traffic issue plaguing the IT Corridor. Today, around 3.5 lakh software professionals are said to be working on this stretch, and the road infrastructure is clearly behind the sector’s massive growth. Mass transit systems and flyovers at key intersections or an elevated highway should have already arrived.
K Purushothaman, senior director, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, at National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), hits the nail on the head when he says the IT Corridor has been “an unfinished agenda for over 10 years”.
These afore-mentioned facilities are still at the planning stage. According to recent reports, the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC) has now completed the detailed project report (DPR) for a 17.7-km elevated highway on OMR, from Tidel Park to Siruseri. There are also indications that the Chennai Metro Rail has drawn up a plan for the IT Corridor that’s awaiting government approval.
When a report about these two developments was shared in the Facebook group of the Federation of OMR Residents Associations (FOMRRA), a member and an OMR resident, Ramaswamy Rangachari, commented, “Oh at last! Of course, we may have to suffer during the construction.”
He was giving voice to the collective sentiment of software employees and residents in the area.
Infrastructure work aimed at decongesting a stretch that is already bursting at the seams is like emergency surgery that is bound to have complications. And, any major developmental work will entail a massive revamp of the traffic system, which includes creation of one-ways and new and short-term diversions. Unlike the old parts of Chennai, the IT Corridor does not lend itself to easy traffic diversions. There are two reasons for this — topography and planning.
There are link roads connecting the IT Corridor to other arterial stretches, but they are spaced wide apart, due to natural resources found on this section. For example, between the Sholinganallur-Medavakkam Link Road and Thoraipakkam-Pallavaram Radial Road, there is the huge Pallikaranai marsh. On the other side, access to East Coast Road is heavily restricted due to the Buckingham Canal.
OMR is essentially a ‘linear village’ — development is largely concentrated on the arterial stretch, and many of the roads leading off it still look antediluvian. Unlike those in a planned locality like Anna Nagar, most of the branch roads on OMR are narrow, and diverting the huge IT buses through them appears to be an unthinkable proposition.
On the positive side, there are efforts to increase inter-connectivity between the IT Corridor and other major stretches.
The Greater Chennai Corporation is said to have identified six areas where bridges could be built over the Buckingham Canal to improve connectivity between OMR and ECR. Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Limited (TNUIFSL) is expected to provide funding to conduct a feasibility study of this proposal.
With the DPR for the elevated highway on the table, public consultation is not far away. When that happens, the IT sector would have to be involved in a big way. For, it is the main user of the arterial stretch. When the project takes off, key representatives of the sector have to be consulted while diversions are introduced.
When it comes to transport in these parts, the sector is a huge stakeholder. Why does the IT Corridor have more Metropolitan Transport Corporation-run AC buses than any other section of Chennai? NASSCOM made a strong case for increasing the fleet of AC buses on this stretch.
Any development of the road and its transport system will impact the industry, a fact urban planners will do well to keep in mind.
