Closed roads create traffic chaos on ECR

Chennai: East Coast Road till it enters the city is a free-flowing stretch. But when one reaches along the road in Thiruvanmiyur, The free-flowing East Coast Road (ECR) hits a bottleneck when it enters the city at Thiruvanmiyur, choking there is traffic chaos and high pollution.
While a proposal to widen the stretch has been pending for nearly a decade, traffic police turned a 150m stretch near Thiruvanmiyur market into a one-way road five years ago, paving the way for illegal hawkers who have turned the highway road into a market area.
Motorists complain that traffic comes to a standstill near Thiruvanmiyur RTO during peak hours. The cause lies around a kilometre ahead near Marundeeswarar Temple, where the road has been closed and traffic diverted towards East Avenue Road. The one-way stretch near the temple now serves as a dumping ground for fruit and vegetable waste. An illegal hawker, refusing to be named, admitted to paying bribes to police who support them.
Kottivakkam resident S Venkatesh, who visits the vegetable market daily, said, "There is a shopping centre on the temple land, which has ample parking space. In spite of that, vehicle But parking is allowed only on the abutting main road." The shopping centre houses about 60 shops, while the vegetable market has about 100 stalls. Visitors park their vehicles on the one-way road, turning the bustling stretch into an accident-prone zone.
State highways department officials said they started land acquisition to widen the road in 2010 and received administrative nod three years ago. The government sanctioned Rs 385 crore for the project. An official said, "It is just a matter of time before work begins." The 22m-wide stretch between Akkarai and Thiruvanmiyur will be widened to 30m.