CHENNAI: More than a year after they were uprooted during cyclone ‘Vardah’, the fence around vacant spaces below road over bridges in the city’s southern suburbs are yet to be replaced. In the absence of a protective fence or a compound wall around the vacant spaces, they are now becoming mini dump yards.
Over the past decade, the southern suburbs witnessed the creation of a number of road over bridges and grade separators. Unlike Chennai city limits, there was ample space available around these road over bridges for creating parking lots and pavements for pedestrians. Even as the bridges were being constructed, residents and traders hoped that the projects would put an end to problems caused by lack of parking space for vehicles.
According to sources in the State Highways Department, they had received a lot of representations towards this effect urging them to use the space below for allowing parking of vehicles, but they did not allow it as such spots were ‘traffic generating’ points. It was being allowed in some places owing to area specific factors, they said.
However, residents are not convinced. They said that neither has the State Highways Department used the vast vacant space for productive use nor the space had been maintained well. Pointing out to the damaged steel fences and concrete base at the bridges at Chromepet, Sanatorium and Pallavaram, they said these places had now become an eye sore.