Date:19/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/19/stories/2008091952460300.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Wide lanes for heavy vehicles on OMR

Deepa H Ramakrishnan

Transport corporations told to avoid overcrowding of buses

Heavy vehicles get stuck near the toll plazas and hence the decision

The new lane at the toll plaza in Perungudi on Rajiv Gandhi Salai.

CHENNAI: A wide lane on each side of the five toll plazas on and off Rajiv Gandhi Salai has been opened to facilitate an easy movement of heavy vehicles.

The decision of the Tamil Nadu Road Development Corporation, nodal agency for development of the IT Corridor, follows incidents of heavy vehicles getting stuck near the toll plazas.

In one of the incidents, a man travelling on the footboard of a Metropolitan Transport Corporation bus was killed.

The newly added lanes are 5.5 metre wide.

The other lanes near the two main toll plazas in Perungudi and Navalur, and the three satellite plazas near the junction of Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road, on Kalaingar Karunanidhi Salai, which links East Coast Road and Rajiv Gandhi Salai, and Medavakkam Road are 3.4 metres wide.

Drivers of heavy vehicles found it difficult to go on the old lanes. Every day around 35,000 vehicles cross the toll plaza in Perungudi and 120 MTC buses ply on the Rajiv Gandhi Salai (formerly Old Mahabalipuram Road) and 14 vehicles on the link road to ECR.

“We have told transport corporations to avoid overcrowding of buses when they use the normal lanes, to which they agreed. Otherwise, the buses should use the new lanes that are wider," TNRDC Managing Director K. R.Viswanathan told The Hindu. Speed breakers and signages have been put up at the toll plazas instructing drivers about the availability of the wide lanes ahead.

Security personnel have also been posted to ensure that overcrowded buses do not take the regular lanes, he added.