Following the accident on 80-Feet Road, residents and experts want the State government to seriously consider replacing medians that have sharp railings with safer ones, including crash barriers on many stretches.
While Chennai Corporation will be replacing old medians with new structures, the Highways Department will have nearly half the length of its total roads with crash barriers. Corporation officials said their new medians will be one foot wide at the bottom, 1.3 metres in height and tapering to half-a-foot on top.
“We are planning to re-develop medians on 194 bus route roads. The design will be similar to the new design adopted by Highways Department. The height of median on Highway stretches is 1.5 metres. Bus route roads in the city will have medians of lesser height. The median along many stretches will be redesigned after police approval. We will not maintain plants or install iron railings on medians,” a Corporation official said.
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A number of medians on bus routes have been damaged by pilferage. The iron scrap collected from the medians is reportedly being sold to scrap dealers by those who damage the railings. Such activity is reported frequently near Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation’s liquor outlets.
The Highways Department maintains around 66 km of roads inside the city limits. Of this, 30 km have crash barriers as medians. “These serve four purposes – reducing injuries to motorists in the event of an accident, preventing people from sleeping on top, cutting out headlight glare from vehicles from the opposite side and stop pedestrians from jumping over it,” officials said. At present, work is on to construct such barriers on Grand Southern Trunk Road and Poonamallee High Road. The cost of constructing crash barrier is Rs. 6,000 per metre.