SOUTH CHENNAI'S NIGHTMARE: Traffic pile-up at the Kathipara Junction. — Photo: S. S. Kumar

CHENNAI : Arun K is today in a state of utter despair.

The 28-year-old media professional has to cross the Kathipara Junction, Guindy and Adyar almost every day in attending to his work. For the past six months he is invariably delayed by half an hour to 90 minutes for appointments or meetings with business contacts.

He is not alone. Thousands like him who use this stretch morning and evening can be seen seething at the pile-up at Kathipara junction. Here construction work is under way to build a massive clover leaf-like grade separator. City planners say the grade separator will improve traffic flow at this gateway to the city.

The massive gridlock caused by thousands of cars, two wheelers, buses, and heavy vehicles at the junction from almost every direction paralyses movement, delays journeys, upsets travel plans and compounds road rage.

Regular users feel that with the availability of new construction technologies, work ought to be speeded up, especially because the National Highways Authority of India is involved and there should be little difficulty in finding the appropriate technologies, funds and manpower.

But what's more galling, to quote a factory owner who drives from Indira Nagar to the Madras Export Processing Zone every day, no alternative routes or proper traffic management plans are in place. "It is puzzling that the planners did not make plans for diverting at least smaller vehicles through the inner roads of Guindy, Adambakkam and St. Thomas Mount so that a part of the junction is cleared for bigger vehicles," factory owner S. Sivagnanam notes.

A factory owner and an educationist who commute between Chennai and Guduvanchery daily but at different times say the problem is acute from 5 p.m to 8 p.m. The pile-up extends from Guindy station to Meenambakkam airport and even beyond. Even the dozens of policemen in and around the junction are unable to handle the jammed traffic or the vehicle drivers who try to outsmart other road users by trying to get ahead in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. To the north, the traffic spills on to the Halda signal (the junction of Anna Salai and Sardar Patel Road at Guindy) and Anna Salai up to CIT Nagar junction and similarly on Sardar Patel Road up to IIT. On Thursday, for example, hundreds of vehicles stood paralysed on the stretch from Raj Bhavan to Adyar, without any chance of breaking away from the jam. Towards the south, commuters are in for another ordeal on the Grand Southern Trunk Road near the Chennai Airport (where work is under way on an over-bridge).

The roads leading away from Kathipara junction too, such as the Inner Ring Road and the Mount Poonamallee High Road are also choked. Digging work on the sides of the IRR has compounded the problem.

Amidst all the chaos, what is notable is that one sees very few MTC buses, clearly showing up the cause of the entire problem, the lack of a reliable public transport with good connectivity, which could have a significant impact in reducing the dependence on private vehicles.

The lack of buses compounds the problem of pollution and wastage of precious fuel.

Fifty two-wheelers or cars on the road produce 10 times more pollution causing emissions than a 60-seat bus, global level studies have shown, activists point out.

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