MORE MEDIANS

MORE MEDIANS
The roads in the Downtown area are getting more divided, finds DTP
ANJALI MUTHANNA, Downtown


In the Downtown Plus article titled Divided that appeared on January 14, it was reported that several medians had come up in the Fraser Town area — on Promenade Road (near St Francis Xavier’s), Assaye Road, Clarke Road and Hall Road. Now, more medians have come up in the area — another on Promenade Road (near the Madras Sappers), St John’s Road, Meanee Avenue and St John’s Church Road leading on to Dickenson Road.
Cooke Town resident Divya Iyer is quite happy that there are so many medians coming up in the area. “Every road that goes two ways needs a median and these high medians are excellent ideas. I’m especially happy with what they’ve done to MM Road. I had a bad accident there once because it didn’t have a median at the time,” she says, adding that there should be one on Banaswadi Road as well. “It’s such a busy twoway road, but there’s no median,” she says.
Divya’s also glad that there are medians on both sections of Promenade Road. “There was definitely a need for one near Thom’s and now, the one near near the Madras Sappers leading up to Mother Theresa Circle has also helped,” she says. However, with the BBMP work currently going on at Assaye Road, traffic also gets diverted on to Promenade Road via a couple of arterial roads. “I don’t mind the medians in the long run, but with the work on Assaye Road going on, the one on Promenade Road is a problem,” says Richards Town resident Rubina M. “You have to get to on to Promenade Road and then battle traffic at the Mother Theresa Circle signal, which is quite bad during rush hour,” she explains.
The partial median on Meanee Avenue has also helped to some extent. “But it doesn’t go all the way up to the signal at Mother Theresa Circle. Then impatient motorists, especially two-wheelers and auto drivers, are up to their old tricks — cutting into the other lane so that they can go right up to the signal to save themselves waiting time,” says Fraser Town resident Anamika Kumar. “This isn’t the case with even the other side of Meanee Avenue because there’s always been a complete median there,” she adds.
There is also a median at the St John’s Road-Dickenson Road intersection, which was previously divided only by barricades. “And those barricades would get moved around and generally looked very disorganised,” says Banaswadi resident Pratima M, adding, “In any case, it’s mostly autos that take that route because they aren’t allowed to go down Kamaraj Road, so that’s not a very busy intersection.”