As the State Highways Department is moving towards completing the second level of the Gandhipuram flyover, connecting 100 Feet Road to Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road, the city’s residents have urged the Coimbatore Corporation to widen the causeway across Sanganoor Canal.
The Corporation constructed the causeway in 2010, in the run up to the World Classical Tamil Conference, after removing a few houses that were on encroached land to establish a link to Avinashi Road at Nava India Junction.
Now, with the flyover construction proceeding at a good pace and completion not far off, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road will see heavy vehicle movement as road users from R.S. Puram and areas west thereof will take the North Coimbatore Flyover and then the second level of Gandhipuram flyover to reach Nava India.
But the easy access that the flyover will give will be undone by the narrow causeway, says consumer activist K. Kathirmathiyon.
The area resident and DMK member A. Selvaraj says that a sharp turn on the road has been the cause of a few accidents with both two-wheeler riders and four-wheeler drivers unable to negotiate the curve.
Tourist bus and lorry operators parking their vehicles only adds to the problem and this makes it all the more necessary for the civic body to widen the causeway, says C.K.D. Yuvaraj, another resident.
Mr. Kathirmathiyon says that the Corporation should also ask the Tangedco to relocate the two high-tension towers to road edges as the towers’ base structures have narrowed the road width. That the Corporation did not object and allowed the Tangedco to construct the base structures by encroaching upon the road is in itself wrong.
The Corporation officials say there is no move at present to widen the causeway, but the civic body will definitely look into the issue.