Gandhi Mandapam junction near IIT Madras to soon be signal-free as highways department completes the widening of Chennai’s Sardar Patel Road

Chennai: The busy Gandhi Mandapam junction near the Indian Institute of Technology Madras will be signal-free once state highways department completes the widening of the Sardar Patel Road.Traffic police say the plan is that vehicles from Guindy to Kotturpuram will have a free left, while those heading from Kotturpuram to Guindy will be diverted to a free left on Sardar Patel Road and then a U-turn under the L-flyover. These vehicles, along with those from Adyar and Guindy, will then have a straight thoroughfare.Vehicles heading to Kotturpuram will have a free right. Highways officials said that there are currently two lanes under the IIT flyover "We are expanding this into four lanes. Vehicles heading to Kotturpuram will take a left from the leftmost corridor, about 20m away from the junction. If this is done, vehicles can be given a free right into the rightmost lane of the Kotturpuram Road. There is a signal for now as the road is narrow and vehicles cannot converge from both sides," he said. He added that they will set up clear signboards and build an L-shaped median garden to facilitate the left turn.Highways department says that about 11,000 vehicles cross the stretch in an hour. In this, about 5,700 vehicles cross the Kotturpuram junction from Adyar, creating a bottleneck. "This is why the L-flyover was built. The Kotturpuram junction bottleneck will ease up after the diversion plan," the official said.Deputy mayor Mahesh Kumar said the widening work was resumed recently after polling ended. "They stopped it to not cause hindrance to campaigns. We can expect it to be completed in a month, and new diversions will come into place soon after that," he said.B Ramkumar of Adyar Kasturba Nagar Residents Welfare Association said: "The IIT-M flyover is one-way at times, and two-way at other times. This is confusing, and adds to the traffic at the Gandhi Mandapam junction."The highways has completed widening on the Guindy-Adyar stretch of Sardar Patel Road, and land has been acquired on the Adyar-Guindy stretch. Widening is yet to begin.