When the full work week starts on Monday, November 7, what could be the situation in the Mandaveli – Abiramapuram – Alwarpet zone where two major roads have been marked for diversions for Chennai Metro rail work?
It will be very chaotic, at least during peak hours – between 8 and 10 am and between 6 and 8 pm.
The traffic diversions came into effect on Saturday and going by the traffic flows and short cuts that motorists are taking to their destinations, the weekday traffic is bound to slow down.
There can be two main causes for this – many off-main road ways are narrow streets and in many places the encroachments will pose hurdles. Also, in many inner streets, car owners park their vehicles on the streets and in some places like on Desika Road, as we saw on Sunday afternoon, cars are parked on both sides of the street.
There are many signboards put up now on key streets guiding the motorists .
But Traffic Police on duty here will need to quickly move around this zone and arrange for the cars to be moved away and get civic workers to clear debris and other materials dumped around.
In Seethammal Colony streets, which motorists will negotiate now, the new drains work is 90% complete and the street edges are rough and some parts not even fully relaid. This too will slow down vehicles.
Traffic police is not very alert to the situation. They are not able to effectively control traffic and are not able to hold the law breakers.