PALLURUTHY: Like in the rest of the regions of West Kochi, the residents in the remote areas of Palluruthy wake up in the wee hours of the morning, to join the perpetually long queue and wait for an unpredictable water tanker.
After the squabble for time around the tanker outlet, they are in for another fight as the day breaks - for space, on the roads.
Palluruthy, which shares its borders with Thoppumpady in the north and Perumpadappu in the south and flanked by Willingdon Island and Chellanam in the east and west, is connected by the state highway that winds into too many narrow stretches on its course.
As a result, traffic snarl-ups are a regular occurrence here and the second biggest drawback after water shortage. During the peak hours in the mornings and evenings, the arterial road that struggles to keep two buses within its breadth at the same time, is bombarded with a swarm of vehicles from both the directions.
“Traffic is a mess here, especially between 9 am and 11 am and 3 pm and 5 pm in the evening. What aggravates the situation further is the lack of a parallel road to the state highway, which is a bottleneck at several places,” said local resident M K Fasil. To reduce the number of vehicles on the state highway and save the hours lost in the daily traffic jams, the region urgently requires the resumption of two stalled projects, aimed at laying parallel stretches to the state highway.
The work of the 40-foot-road, proposed three decades ago to connect Thoppumpady with Edakochi with a 40-foot-wide road, is only half way through. Of the total eight-kilometre road, the 4-km stretch from Thoppumpady to Nambiyapuram junction has been laid, but the remaining stretch from the junction to Edakochi is still on paper.
“The project has not seen any progress because we do not have the money to acquire the land along the proposed stretch. We need about `8 crore to complete the project,” said Kochi Mayor Tony Chammany.
At a public function last year, Minister K Babu, also MLA of Tripunithura, promised to allot `8 crore to the get the project going, but Chammany said the Corporation has not received the money yet.
The other project that is trailing behind schedule is the construction of a bridge connecting the P Gangadharan Road, leading away from the state highway in Palluruthy, with the Indira Gandhi Road that leads into Pampaimoola in Edakochi.
If the bridge comes into being, the 3-km stretch between Palluruthy and Pampaimoola can be turned into an alternative route for motorists using the state highway to travel between the two destinations.
Like in the 40-foot road project, shortage of money for land acquisition is the villain here as well, according to the Mayor.
Palluruthy ward 21 councillor K N Sunil Kumar, said, “More than the dearth of funds, it is the lack of political will that has derailed these projects.”
The region also needs widening of the Kumbalangi Vazhi road between Palluruthy-Kacherippady and Aquinas College junction, and a bridge between Kannagattu Road and Willingdon Island, he said.