COIMBATORE: Street vendors and traders who have been ordered to vacate encroachments on the Mettupalayam Road before Sunday (February 11) are yet to move out. The Highways Department officials had earlier served a notice to them in order to decongest the roads.
Traffic congestion in Coimbatore district has increased manifold with the spurt in the number of vehicles. The width of the roads, meanwhile, started to shrink due to encroachments by traders and street vendors.
The Nagapattinam-Coimbatore-Gundlupet National Highway (NH 181) is popularly called the Mettupalayam (MTP) Road. It runs through the Coimbatore district for over 40 km and has become the busiest road in Coimbatore city after the Avinashi Road in recent times.
Numerous automobiles including local, inter-district and inter-state vehicles use the Mettupalayam Road to travel to Ooty, Kotagiri, Coonoor and Mysore. The road remains busy throughout the year. The traffic congestion has been increasing at a rapid pace every single day with the growing traffic.
Encroachments by traders and street vendors added to the traffic woes of the public and motorists. In response, the Assistant Divisional Engineer of the National Highways wing of the State Highways Department in Coimbatore district sent a notice to all the illegal encroachers on the 2 km stretch on the MTP Road between the Highways Department office to the fuel pumping station near the Kotagiri Road check post.
The highways department had instructed the encroachers to vacate the place immediately and February 11 was set as the deadline. However, none of the shopkeepers shifted their trade from the MTP Road.
An official from the department said, “Currently, we have served notices to the encroachers who are squatting on the 2 km stretch of the MTP Road. As the encroachers haven’t vacated yet, we wll be providing them a few more days to shift to a new location. We shall remove the encroachments by ourselves using earthmovers if the encroachers don’t remove their shops in the next few days. We are planning to remove all encroachments on the entire stretch of the MTP Road step by step. After completing the encroachment drive here, we will move on to the next.”