Return of revellers chokes GST Road

Vehicles, both government and private, from various districts heading to the state capital literally occupied every inch of the Chennai-Tiruchy national highway resulting in several hours of traffic jam. 

Traffic on the entire stretch of Tambaram-Perungalathur was crawling at a snail’s pace. Many motorists started hitting the bylanes that led to the localities dotting the sides of GST Road. Even after lapse of a couple of hours, there was no respite and the peak hour traffic started complicating the situation. This took a toll on those going on their routine work and particularly the office-goers. 

Students too faced the brunt of the traffic  bottleneck. The transport department had announced 3,770 special buses for the convenience of passengers to return to the city from various districts after Pongal celebrations. As Wednesday was the first working day after the long festival holidays, most of the people had boarded buses or hired cars, vans, etc., from their native place to state capital to return to the city and report for work. 

This resulted in a severe traffic congestion at Perungalathur and Tambaram blocking the route to other areas like Chengalpattu. Even the CMBT bus terminus at Koyambedu, which did not witness significant crowd at the start of the festival holidays, recorded a large number of passenger footfall. A similar scene was witnessed at the neighbouring omni bus stand as well. Motorists said that traffic congestion has become the order of the day during festive seasons especially at Tambaram and Perungalathur. 

“Authorities should have a proper and effective plan during such long holidays and to ensure that there was no traffic snarls and vehicles plied without any hitch,” said one of the motorists, who was stuck on the road near Perungalathur railway station. 

“It is 27 km from Chengalpattu to Tambaram and it will take around 50 minutes to cover the distance during normal days. But, on Wednesday it took me two hours to cross the same stretch. Though the traffic police personnel tried their best, the congestion did not ease,” he added.