Rising up

A little over six months after the traffic police shut down one side of Cenotaph Road, construction of the flyover was inaugurated. During that time, the Metrowater folks dug up the road to re-lay their water and sewage pipes, the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board has shifted some of the power cables and Chennai Telephones has restrung their phone lines. In the meantime, a couple of landowners went to court challenging a notification acquiring their land. That last bit can be a complete dampener - some projects had been delayed for years together while the courts sorted out why who did what to whom. In this case the challenge seems to be only against the procedures adopted, so chances of work being affected are not very high.

For the moment, Cenotaph Road and the Chamiers Road junction look like badlands. The pilings on the Cenotaph Road side have been completed and ones on Turnbulls Road will begin soon. The pile driver moved across last week - it should have started its work out there a couple of days ago. Work seems to be moving ahead quite rapidly - this one might actually beat the target date for its completion, courts willing!

For your information

Yesterday, the traffic routing through Chamiers Road, Cenotaph Road and Mount Road was shuffled around a bit. This, they say, is the first step to building a flyover / grade separator (??!)at the entrance to Turnbulls Road. The flyover itself something that has been spoken about for a long time; initially planned on Chamiers Road, it has now been turned around 90-degrees and will take off from Cenotaph Road to land on Turnbulls Road.

So, since last morning, both the 'C' Roads have been swarming with policemen. Basically, traffic is now one-way on both of them; The good thing - for me - is the opening of a right turn from Chamiers Road on to Cenotaph Road; while the latter is one-way towards Mount Road, the former runs in the other direction. Normally when a change like this is made, all of it is explained to each motorist, but there was a difference yesterday. Most of the policemen had these pink leaflets with them - despite the numerous mis-spellings, this is a good attempt by the Chennai City Traffic Police to document the changes it implements. I believe it is the first time that something like this is being done.

The leaflet came in handy to convince a policeman that while I could not make a right turn from my street on to Cenotaph Road, there's nothing stopping me turning left into my street!

A Bend in the Adayar

It is very difficult to believe that just north of this bend in the Adayar is one of the most crowded intersections of Chennai: the Chamiers Road-Cenotaph Road junction, which is where quite a lot of the traffic from the IT Corridor pours out as it flows towards other parts of North and West Chennai. But noon traffic was light enough to stop and take this picture.


A carriageway is being planned along the sides of the Adayar - sure hope that it will not affect the river itself, or reduce the greenery along its sides.