Work on channel to be stepped up to ease Anna Nagar traffic

Motorists and MTC buses have been vying for space as the WRD is using a six-metre-wide space for the project. Photo: M. Karunakaran

Residents of Anna Nagar who are grappling with traffic snarls and detours due to traffic arrangements, which are facilitating various ongoing infrastructure projects, may have some respite soon.

The Water Resources Department (WRD), which is constructing a box-type channel on Third Avenue, Anna Nagar, to carry excess water from Otteri Nullah and to the Cooum river, is expediting the Rs. 10-crore project. This will enable the Chennai Corporation to relay the road.

The concrete channel is being built at a depth of two feet to five feet below the road level. With a width of four metres and a depth of two metres, it will carry 400 cubic feet of water per second. This is about the quantity of water that inundates parts of Anna Nagar East during the monsoons.

The work, covering 1,450 metre of the main road, was started a year ago. Though traffic is allowed on both sides of the road, motorists and MTC buses vie for space as the WRD is using a six-metre-wide space for the project.

WRD officials said work to construct the channel has been completed for a stretch of 850 metres. “We have left a gap of 50 metre near the K4 police station, Anna Nagar East. We need traffic diversion for a few days to complete the work,” said an official.

The civic body has so far re-laid the road for a stretch of nearly 500 metres. Residents said blacktopping work has been pending on a portion of the road near the Fifth Main Road junction for nearly a month now. S. Thyagarajan, a resident of Anna Nagar, said navigating the junction was becoming risky, particularly during nights, as vehicles try to cross the junction simultaneously. “The portion of Third Avenue near Kandaswamy Naidu College lacks street illumination. I have to be cautious about buses that take a sharp turn at the junction,” he said.

Residents want the civic body to blacktop the road and provide median and streetlights to ease traffic congestion.

At present, the WRD is carrying out the work near the Anna Nagar roundtana. “We will start work from the roundtana to Cooum river in February once Chennai Metro Rail Limited finishes building an underground duct there. We expect to complete the entire project by June,” said an official.