May 14; 6.50 a.m. A truck with a concrete mixer hinged to it is cooling its tyres at the Akkarai junction on ECR-OMR Link Road. Sitting crouched in the rear part of the truck, young construction workers shoot aimless, nowhere glances while not fidgeting with their mobiles.
6:57 a.m. One of them rises up to his full height, and stands in an attitude of readiness.
7:00 a.m. Swiftly pulled, the barricades on one side of the carriageway on East Coast Road screech to the sides. What follows is akin to pent-up water rushing in as the floodgates are opened. Motorised vehicles enter the vacuum, and among them is the elongated vehicle, which sidles on to the arterial road. After covering barely 150 metres, it turns into Lily Pond Main Road. Its destination might have been a ridiculously short distance away. But distances hardly matter in this hour. If it had showed up at 5 a.m., it would have been subjected to a two-hour wait. It surely is not the hour of the motorist.
Every Saturday and Sunday, between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., one side of ECR from Thiruvanmiyur to Akkarai (at regular hours, the side where tyres roll towards Thiruvanmiyur ) resembles a water-tight compartment that in some places receive the added protection of a high-quality silicone sealant. Made free of the hum of engines, this side ticks to a raft of leisurely clocks. Take your pick: 20kph, 10kph, 5kph and lesser still. It hosts cyclists, joggers and walkers, and only cyclists, joggers and walkers.
Senthil Kumar Ramalingam and K Ramakrishnan believe that cyclists have finally got their due on East Coast Road, where they were earlier always honked and bullied to the sidelines. | Photo Credit: Prince Frederick
The non-motorised troika lap it up. It is their time to get their back on the motorists. Usually pushed to the fringes, they now have half the road to themselves. They revel in this freedom. Togged up in their cycling gear, Senthil Kumar Ramalingam and K Ramakrishnan, both from Thiruvanmiyur, have turned around at Akkarai and are on their return journey.
They come across as gentle souls, and seem incapable of flinging bitter diatribes at anyone. However, beyond their natural affability, a sneaking sense of triumph shows up. Senthil lends it his voice: It feels great to not be honked and bullied to the roadside. They express their appreciation for the safety arrangements, presided over by police personnel drawn from the Armed Reserve and local police stations.
Stationed at the designated crossings, police personnel keep a gimlet eye on local motorists who would want to cross over to the other side and reach their homes. The intersections of side roads are also on the radar.
A wide section for cyclists, joggers and walkers kept barricaded from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. | Photo Credit: Prince Frederick
A sense of heightened focus on the temporary cycling track is inescapable. At the same time, there is also a sense of something being missed, right behind the back. The Maoris from Aotearoa New Zealand arguably have the best illustration for the bane of blinkered focus. Here it is. Overly focussed on what is in front of him, a blind fisherman strangely makes the mistake of throwing the line in the landward side, behind his back, instead of the seaward side. His pet dog goes for the bait, which gets the poor canine to the point of rendering it voiceless. The blind fisherman reels in the catch, taking it into his head that he has caught a seal. And he cooks his “seal”.
Could the ‘pet dog’ on ECR be the motorists moving both ways and sharing just one side of the fast road. Except for occasional plastic traffic cones, hugely spaced apart, motorists have to rely on their own better judgement and reflexes to avoid head-on crashes.
Plastic traffic cones are placed to force morotists to keep to their lanes, and prevent head-on collision. There is a case for having more traffic cones to make this measure really effective. | Photo Credit: Prince Frederick
From monitoring this traffic movement on three successive Saturdays — April 30, May 7 and May 14 — a majority of motorists do not make the necessary adjustments that the 5 a.m-7 a.m. arrangement demands. There is speeding, overtaking, and the fact that each traffic cone shows up after a drearily long drive — after probably every 300 metres, if not more — does little for motorists’ safety. Many a motorist is given to the regular overtaking behaviour, and every time that happens, the bogey of a front-on collision raises its head. There is a clear case for increasing the number of traffic cones.
On April 30, one motorcyclist heading towards Thiruvanmiyur along with his little child, pulled up at Injambakkam, chose to have a cuppa at a cafe and wait out the hour. At the strike of seven, he hit the road again. Any motorist flying blind into the situation, being unaware of the arrangement is a hazard.
Ramesh, who reveals that he rides on ECR every day and also goes on the annual tour of Tamil Nadu organised by the Tamilnadu Cycling Club, notes that there are safety wrinkles to be ironed out on the section for cyclists as well.
Ramesh, who cycles on ECR every day, calls for more cautiousness on the section for cyclists. | Photo Credit: Prince Frederick
Ramesh explains: “One, the police personnel manning each crossing generally have their backs to the cyclists coming from the Thiruvanmiyur side to stop any motorist-traffic coming from the Mahabalipuram side and allow occasional traffic of minivans, two-wheeler and pedestrians to cross to and from the side lanes. Hence, they allow traffic to cross without considering the cyclists from the Thiruanmiyur side and the people crossing also do not look towards the Thiruvanmiyur side as they do not expect traffic from there. This puts cyclists from the Thiruvanmiyur side at constant risk of collision, especially since cycles do not have horns.”
From all this, one thing stands to reason. There is need for greater education of all road users hitting this stretch between in those two morning hours on weekends. Some road users just have to be reminded to consult their time-pieces: Dangerously enough, these cyclists can be seen riding on the wrong side after 7 a.m., probably unaware that the temporary arrangement has timed out. There should probably be warning boards that scream at the motorists and cannot be ignored. There should be more police personnel at the post during those two hours, with a good number of them allocated for the motorists’ side as well. Speed limit has to be strictly implemented with prior announcement and on-the-spot warning boards reinforcing it. And oh yes, there should be more traffic cones on the motorists’ side.
