Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam road to become 6-lane stretch

Chennai: In the next couple of months, people using the Pallavaram-Thoraippakkam Radial Road can expect to have a smooth ride, as the stretch is set to turn into a six-lane road.
The State Highways department has already taken up the work for a 4.2km stretch from Pallavaram to the Narayanapuram lake.
According to a senior official from the Highways department, the 11-km-long road, which links East Coast Road (ECR) and Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) with GST Road has over the last decade become one of the busiest arterial stretches. It is currently a four-lane stretch that will soon include three lanes on each side.
It may be noted that the traffic here all these days, was extremely high, mainly due to the flyover construction, with vehicles getting jammed especially around 10 am and after 7 pm.
Bikers opine that in the busy hours, people tend to over speed, even as impatient riders don’t wait to cross the road.
All of these reasons majorly contribute to minor accidents happening every now-and-then. Speaking on this, Dheena Dhayaalan, an auto driver says,’It takes a long time to cross this junction in the peak hours. We find it difficult to drop school children in the mornings, as this road is used by lakhs of people everyday. A number of buses too ply in this route.’
Now that the road is getting widened, residents and commuters who ply here, are finally relieved, and are expecting that travel time and congestion will be reduced in the coming days.
According to Kishore Kumar of Pallavaram, ‘It is difficult to travel here. The traffic increases after 6 pm due to the flyover construction. The road too is quite narrow. I am now hopeful that the civic work here will fetch results in time.’