Chennai IT Corridor - Pleasure or Pain?

A little more than a year behind schedule, the IT Corridor project with the State Highways Department still seems to be giving problems to fellow commuters. The 200 crore rupee project that includes strengthening and widening of the road between Madhya Kailash at Adyar and Siruseri on Old Mahapalipuram Road, which was supposed to have completed in December 2005 in phases, still isn’t! In fact, I’d say any road beyond NIFT (that is 3 km) isn’t worth driving on right now.

(Picture courtesy: The Hindu)

A couple of days back, I was talking to my cousin, Manu, working with CTS in Thoraipakkam, and he told me about the hassle all the employees that commute to work beyond this first stretch, face. He aptly chose to put it as “Since they are beautifying the road with fountains and trees/plants in this first stretch, we still have bumpy roads for about 10 km at least before we reach work!” Aaah! Now that’s a shame. He refuses to take his brand new Skoda Octavia because of this and chooses to ride down on his scooty to work; darn, that sure sounds painfully funny. You know why it’s painful; but why is it funny? Because, his fat self sits on poor tiny scooty… LOL!

Now back to our topic, we know for sure the Government is not going to take any action on this matter (No, we won’t learn from the Bangalore experience. We will continue to bring in new employers, provide for 20,000 new jobs and have lousy infrastructure.) For all you know, there are going to be Malls and Supermarkets popping up along side this road soon and tolls would be levied (but naturally!). The only question is, why is it taking such an unreasonably long time to complete?? Considering, they were awfully delayed at the start of the project itself, why is the “beautification” so important at this point??

At such a rate, all hopes of the project getting complete by the end of June 2007 is already lost. Hopefully, the company that is monitoring this project lays some stringent milestones and deadlines soon, so the morning commuters can heave a sign of relief!