With the stormwater drain work on Montieth Road now focussed on the stretch that muzzles the Rukmani Lakshmipathy Salai-Montieth Road-South Cooum Road junction, a huge piece in a jigsaw puzzle is slotting into place.
Driving without the left side-view mirror on Wall Tax Road is to invite unseemly scratches. For years, stormwater drain management around the Rukmani Lakshmiparhy Salai-Montieth Road-South Cooum Road junction has paralleled this negligence, and there are enough scars to show for it.
A Corporation official close to this development notes the stormwater drain network beginning at Montienth Road where it meets Pantheon Road is integral to the waterlogging solution being offered for this junction, particularly the Rukmani Lakshmipathy Salai part of it.
SWD work on Montieth Road
Montieth Road had earlier been managing without a stormwater drain network, notes the Corporation official. Similarly, the long stretch of Rukmani Lakshmipathy Salai starting from the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and Government Ophthalmic Hospital — just ‘Egmore eye hospital’ to most people — has also been up against the monsoon without that symbolic rear-view mirror. “SWD network is being constructed from the Egmore eye hospital to South Cooum Road. Beyond the eye hospital, a SWD system already exists,” says the Corporation official. During every monsoon — not just the epochal 2015 rains — the lack of a stormwater-carrying mechanism would be keenly felt on Rukmani Lakshmipathy Salai, particularly at its junction with Montieth Road and South Cooum Road. The official points out the natural gradient from rainwater flow is from Monthieth Road towards this junction; and from Ethiraj Salai too. Asked if the SWD network being constructed on Pantheon Road — which has caused the service lane along the flyover towards Police Commissioner’s Office Road in Egmore to be restrictive in the vehicular traffic it allows — would be linked to this network, the GCC official reveals it is part of another stormwater-carrying provision. From Pantheon Road, the network slides into Police Commissioner’s Office Road, and carries stormwater into the Cooum elsewhere.
