The missing barricades, making up for a traffic roundabout, on the Melur Highway-Lakeview Road junction is posing high risk for motorists, especially those riding on two-wheelers, these days.
No vehicle that wants to enter the city from the North side can escape passing through this junction – one of the busiest in the city. All the city buses entering the city and moffusil buses bound to the Western parts of the State have to necessarily cross this junction.
The importance of the junction is its vicinity to other crowded and all-important places like vegetable market, flower market, paddy market, SIDCO industrial estate.
The wider Madurai-Melur road with a median only encourages vehicles to move at a faster pace. So is the Lake View Road. However, the other off-shoot road – that leading to SIDCO industrial estate – is very narrow.
The four-road junction has eight-way movement making it very difficult for the motorists to travel for lack of even semblance of any regulating infrastructure like round-about, signal or deployment of police personnel.
The only saving grace is the presence of speed breakers close to the junction on both lanes of Lake View Road.
“The barricades suddenly vanished during the Jallikattu protest. But, even after peace returning long back, the barricades are still missing,” said an auto-driver, S. Murugan.
Even the poles put up by a sponsor ostensibly for blinkers to warn them about the dangerous spot is good enough only to display an advertisement. The huge round-about was successful in safe regulation of vehicles criss-crossing at the junction.
“Even the lighting here is very poor. A high mast light will be helpful for the higher utility of the junction,” Mr. Murugan said.
Not a day passes off without at least one minor accident at the junction, said another auto-driver R. Vellaichamy.
With three markets in the vicinity, all types of load vehicles use the junction. “When drivers from outstation come with loads to the markets, unaware of the nature of the junction, they continue with their rash driving,” Mr. Vellaichamy said.
The peak hour traffic becomes more dangerous as motorbike riders get stranded in the middle of the junction with vehicles zooming past from all directions towards every other road.
Will the city police at least replace the barricades before something worse happens to the motorists here?
