CHENNAI: For people living in and around Navalur, crossing the tollgate on the Rajiv Gandhi Salai is a dreaded task. Motorists are easily by the long queues of vehicles along each lane of the tollgate.
Major IT hubs, malls and sprawling gated communities are present in this locality. As the present tollgate has only sixes lanes, it takes a minimum of 30 minutes to cross the tollgate during rush hour, said residents. Because of vehicle pile-up in the service lanes, accidents are also increasing. Because of this, many motorists take the wrong side of the road to avoid waiting.
“It is a headache to cross this tollgate at any time of the day. But if one ventures out between 8 am and 11 am and 5 pm and 9 pm, it is rare to see vehicles moving at all,” said Prakash K, a resident and an IT employee. Also, during rush hour in the evening, out of the six lanes, four are kept specially for vehicles travelling from Siruseri to Sholinganallur. Because of this, vehicles coming from Semmencherry can access only the other two lanes resulting in heavy traffic jam.
Though this tollgate comes under the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC), guidelines set by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) apply to them.
According to a recent order passed by NHAI, the number of tollgate lanes in a tollgate gate should be four times the number of lanes in a road. Hence, this tollgate at Navalur needs to have 24 lanes as Rajiv Gandhi Salai is a six-lane road. But as expansion of Siruseri-Poonjeri project has been delayed inadvertently, the existing tollgates are also not expanded.