Car owners have transformed the footpath along a 500-metre-long stretch of P.S. Sivaswamy Salai Road into a parking zone.
This stretch extends from Vivekananda College to Laksha Hospitals.
On one side of this stretch, where vehicular traffic moves towards Radhakrishnan Salai, cars, some of which seem abandoned, can be seen occupying the footpath, making it almost out of bounds for pedestrians.
Connecting Mylapore with Radhakrishnan Salai and Royapettah High Road via Luz Church Road, P.S. Sivaswamy Salai is busy.
“Many senior citizens go for a walk on P.S. Sivaswamy Salai, and parking of vehicles on the footpath poses a threat to their safety,” says S. Ramachandran, a resident of Mylapore.
To address this problem, the portion of P.S. Sivaswamy Salai running along Vivekananda College is lined with steel barricades. With this measure, the footpath outside the premises of the college is intact, and is being used by its students and other pedestrians.
Unlike other sections of P.S. Sivaswamy Salai, the stretch between Vivekananda College and Cathedral Road is narrow; the footpath is just as narrow. So, it is not at all easy to ignore the problem of abandoned vehicles.
Many motorists use the road to reach Radhakrishnan Salai bypassing the congested Royapettah High Road. In fact, P.S. Sivaswamy Salai is also a key MTC bus route. Pedestrians have to walk carefully along the parked vehicles to ensure they are not hit by passing vehicles.
It may be noted that in 2015, a portion of P.S. Sivaswamy Salai caved in, resulting in damage to water pipelines.
It took Chennai Metro Water more than a year to re-lay new pipelines on the stretch, following which the Greater Chennai Corporation laid the stretch with bitumen in 2016.
Two-way traffic was resumed in 2016, easing traffic flow.
“Abandoned vehicles on the stretch will be removed immediately soon,” says a Corporation official.
