Chaos outside new-look Periyar bus stand

Madurai: A day after the redesigned Periyar bus stand was thrown open to public, traffic snarls and chaos reigned supreme on routes leading to different places from the bus stand on Thursday. This has strengthened the widespread charges hurled against the previous regime that the redesign undertaken under the smart city programme was flawed.
With traffic coming to a standstill, police had a tough time making managing vehicle movement.The junction where buses from Periyar bus stand and vehicles from Ellis Nagar, Arapalayam and Simmakkal meet, near the Kattabomman statue, was chaotic. “All this when the shopping complex and bus stand adjacent to it have not been opened. If the shopping complex is also completed, it is going to be extremely difficult to use this route,” said Joseph Raj, a teacher.
``I decided to take it easy on Thursday thinking that traffic will be lesser from now, but I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was chaotic and I was late for work,’’ said K Sugumar who works in a private company in Palanganatham. While it was announced through the public address system that people should come into the bus stand and take their buses, many continued to stand by the roadside near the fire station. What is worse, buses also stopped there causing traffic to come to a standstill. There were traffic snarls in West Veli street and Ellis Nagar bridge in the morning.
Such a big complex should have more toilet facilities, said Josephine Raj, a resident of Palanganatham. “When more people start using it, more toilets are a must, but only one toilet complex is operating. Physically challenged and elderly people would have to cross the road to use the toilets,” she said.
Though there were traffic signals to guide vehicles coming on the Ellis Nagar bridge towards the city, there were none to control the buses coming out of the bus stand. “As this is a complex structure, there should be a separate traffic signal for the buses,’’ said S Damodaran.
Though city buses have to be operated on 21 routes, at present they ply only to Melur, Thiruvathavur, Alagarkoil, Pudur, Thiruparankundram, Kariapatti, Thirupuvanam, Alanganallur, Chekkanoorani and Thirumangalam from the new bus stand while buses for other destinations continued to start from outside. TNSTC sources said they were organising schedules and routes and full operations would start in a week or so. With parking lots inside the bus stand complex going to handle nearly 1,000 vehicles, people say the vehicles going in and coming out of the parking lot would add to the traffic congestion.