Monday, November 02, 2009

A truck on a pedestrian bridge

Chennai has three waterways running through it, one of which is the Buckingham Canal -- once an elegant canal on which barges transported people and goods, now essentially an open sewer. But the canal divides the city, especially the southern parts of the city: there are very few motorable crossings south of the Adyar river. The first major one is at Sardar Patel road, the next at Tidel Park about 2km further south, and the next at Shozhinganallur nearly 10 km beyond that.

In between the first two above, there was a narrow pedestrian bridge, which served as the main route for residents of our institute's hostel and guest house -- and several others in the neighbourhood -- to access the commercial areas of Indira Nagar, Adyar and Besant Nagar on the other side. The bridge was designed for pedestrians and cyclists; motorbikes were always frequent users, but recently auto-rickshaws and even cars have been using it heavily. Whenever police tried to barricade it so that only pedestrians could access it, the barriers were removed.

Early on Sunday morning, a truck laden with bricks tried to use it. This was the result.

Thanks to one truck driver who had no idea what his vehicle weighed, and several inconsiderate souls who kept removing those barricades, residents of this mainly academic neighbourhood will no longer be able to walk across (or cycle across) to the commercial area on the other side. And when I cycle to work, which is fairly often, I will need to use the busy main road and not the quiet inner roads that I earlier favoured.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What kind of barricades did they use? The kind that is anchored into the ground or the kind that is just kept on the road?

gaddeswarup said...

I was visiting your institute a few years ago and found that road next to the bridge very difficult to cross.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

anonymous - they were stone barriers cemented to the ground, that were prised away at night (by auto drivers, I've heard).

gaddeswarup - it's now a 6-lane road with 70 kmph traffic, but there's a pedestrian overbridge. Nevertheless, many people seem to prefer risking their lives crossing on the surface, clambering over the high divider in the middle...

km said...

You mean they don't ask you three questions before letting you cross the bridge?

Rahul Siddharthan said...

km - "what is your name, what is your quest, what is the weight of your truck"?