Let there be light! Pitch dark highways abutting Chennai make commuting unsafe

CHENNAI: N Karthik’s fingers are always on his car’s headlight controls whenever he drives down the

Vandalur-Kelambakkam Road

after dark. Karthik, a resident of Vandalur, switches between the high and low beams incessantly to make sure the road does not throw up a surprise.

“Visibility is very low. Once my car ran over a helmet which I didn’t spot. It got stuck under my car but I did not stop because one could get robbed on that road,” said Karthik.

Low visibility due to lack of streetlights on highways abutting the city is making commuting unsafe for motorists. Making matters worse, neither state highways department nor the local body wants to take responsibility.

Key stretches like Vandalur-Kelambakkam Road, Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam 200 Feet Radial Road, Medavakkam Main Road and GST Road plunge into darkness after sunset. Traffic on the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road, which connects GST Road with OMR, has gone up three-fold over the past five years, but a 3km stretch of the road remains unlit.

“Only a portion of the road from Pallavaram has lights. But despite that, visibility remains low,” said S Asokan, a commuter.

While motorists find the darkness unsettling, those who wait for public transport find it “creepy”. S Ashwini, a resident of Guduvancherry, boards the bus back home from work at Perungalathur. She was one of the several commuters waiting for a bus in darkness near the Perungalathur signal. “There is no bus stop. I feel safe in a crowd. On some occasions, when there would be only three or four people waiting for the bus after 9pm, the darkness can be creepy,” she said.

A senior highways official told TOI that the department was not responsible for maintaining streetlights. “It is the duty of the local body,” he said. However, an engineer from Tambaram municipality, addressing a query about the absence of streetlights on GST Road near Irumbuliyur junction, put the onus on the highways. “It has not provided us the poles. Our responsibility is only maintenance.”

Even legislators have no clarity. TOI rang Chengalpattu legislator M Varalakshmi but the call was answered by her husband Madhusudhanan who insisted on responding. “I am not sure whether it is highways or the local body. They gave me confusing answers when I asked them to put up lights on Vandalur-Kelambakkam Road,” he said.

But M Radhakrishnan, coordinator of Thozhan NGO that works on road-safety awareness, said the highways department was at fault. “When it sanctions for paving a highway, the government should ensure that the highways department installs streetlights,” he said.