Gopalapuram junction lacks ‘overseers’ at crucial hour

Avvai Shanmugam Salai and Conran Smith Road and Gopalapuram First Street concentrate traffic at a junction in Gopalapuram. Around this junction, school bells ring more often than vehicle horns are hooted.

Four schools (DAV Boys Senior Secondary School, DAV Girls Senior Secondary School, National Public School and Sunshine C. Sarda Secondary School) nestle nearby.

In the morning hours, traffic police personnel are in attendance before school students are, at their respective schools; and that ensures regular motorists have a smooth run through the junction, unaffected by the hurly burly of parents and their wards in tow descending on the junction with their wheels. The personnel in white-and-khakhi regulate traffic around school time and prevent logjams. Residents seek the same diligence from the traffic police in the evening when the schools close for the day.

B. Bhaskaran, a Gopalapuram resident, notes that this junction is under greater strain ever since the Royapettah High Road-Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai flyover (also called ‘Ajantha bridge’) was demolished and additional traffic began to flow through Gopalapuram First Street and the junction on the way to destinations such as Peters Road, Royapettah GH and Pycrofts Road.

Bhaskaran observes that the presence of traffic police personnel ensures the junction is not overwhelmed on account of school as well as such traffic.

In the same breath, he notes the absence of these personnel is felt in the evening rush hour, particularly around school closing time.

Because of lack of regulation, motorists hitting the junction are a law unto themselves and the unruliness creates a conducive climate for accidents.

Besides ensuring traffic police personnel show up at the junction in the evening, efforts also need to be made to discuss school-closing time with these schools. If these schools put their heads together with arrive at different school-closing time, traffic from them would not hit the junction en masse.

He underlines another factor contributing to the traffic chaos at the junction: lack of parking at a marriage hall at Avvai Shanmugam Salai causes unauthorised parking.