Visitors to Chennai know Kodambakkam as much as Central or Marina. The area has drawn a lot of tourists by loads of buses because of the film studios and the opportunities several of them saw for a career in acting or as technician.
The studios held a lot of glamour in those decades, while many have been closed down as producers started moving to distant cities and village side locales. But the bridge in what was originally Koda Bagh (because the place had a lot of horse stables in the British Raj days) was the first one to come up to help the film stars living in the Eastern parts of the city and those coming to the city by train or car or flight to reach their place of work on time.
In those days of railway crossing gates and lift gates, people moving in pleasures (Plymouth and Ambassador/Fiat cars) as well as those going in tongas, cycles, rickshaws had to wait indefinitely for the mainline trains as well as goods trains to pass through. The gates used to be closed well ahead of the passage of the train and opened a few minutes after they had crossed the spot. In those days, many film personalities, who are no more, lived in Pondy Bazaar/ Mambalam area and near The Music Academy or Adyar, where the music college is located. The need for the bridge was strongly felt in the place where there was a railway crossing. Kodambakkam was one of the busiest areas in the city from very early in the morning till late hours. Construction of a bridge was first proposed in the Lok Sabha in the late 1950s. The Madras State Highways Department took up the construction of the bridge somewhere in September 1963 and completed the work in September 1965. The worn-out bearings between the pillars and deck slabs are now sought to be replaced with new ones what with a phenomenal increase in the number and nature of vehicles crossing the bridge today. Studios have been replaced with hospitals with super-speciality wards.
A few years ago, an expert study conducted on the 623-metre-long and 12.8-metre-wide bridge felt that expansion joints had weakened due to water seepage and iron rods had got exposed in many spots.
The bridge which serves as a crucial link between the city and its Western suburbs like Vadapalani, Virumgambakkam, Porur etc, developed a lot of pot holes and the bumps could be easily felt by anyone going in a phutphut share auto over the structure. The Kodambakkam bridge also became famous in the 70s and 80s for the huge market that came up underneath it. A number of vegetable shops almost in the scale of a market, residential buildings, small-scale industrial units and automobile shops came up over the years making service lanes hard to use. The development of Trustpuram, Choolaimedu and Zakaria Colony is another factor which has contributed to the traffic pell-mell. The bridge needed to be widened and in fact, another one should have come by now before the restoration is being thought of as the Kodambakkam bridge serves lakhs of vehicles from Porur and residential colonies.
Another place which needs some attention in the near future is the Doraiswamy Road subway where thousands of vehicles including two-wheelers, buses, cars and autorickshaws from West Mambalam, Ashok Nagar, KK Nagar, MGR Nagar, Nesappakkam and part of Kodambakkam vie with one another to reach T Nagar and beyond.
The junction of Usman Road and Doraisamy Road during peak hours becomes unmanageable even after the flyover has come up giving a tough time for traffic police to manage vehicles going towards West Mambalam and the ones coming from West Mambalam to T Nagar. Apart from multi floor shops, the area has a lot of schools.
Almost 40 years ago, an uncle of mine lived in a house on Station Road near Doraiswamy Road and I have seen the level crossing gate, both the old one and the lift gate, being operated with a bell-ringing minutes ahead of the train coming there. There was no subway leading to West Mambalam known as Pazhaiyya Mambalam for quite some time and abhorred because of its numerous giant-size mosquitos. There was not even a metal road at Doraiswamy and Rameswaran Street until 1950, according to my father. One could easily walk or cycle along the Ranganathan Street which is nearly impossible today. West Mambalam and Rangarajapuram and places around have developed in leaps and bounds and have hot selling properties today which the oldies never dreamt of three decades ago.