CHENNAI: With increasing activity at the AIADMK headquarters after the party romped to victory in the recent elections, residents of Royapettah, especially Lloyds Road, are finding a greater need for a functioning traffic signal in the Ajantha junction, near the party office.The five-way junction, whose roads head to Balaji Nagar, Royapettah Hospital, Triplicane, Mylapore and Gopalapuram each, has a traffic signal and a police booth that have been inoperative and unused for long now, causing a huge traffic rush during the peak hours. The State Employee Provident Fund office situated near the junction ensures a constant stream of traffic. The bottleneck in the locality is also due to the high number of schools situated on the roads that form the junction. The arterial road is the route that buses headed for Anna Square and Royapettah ply on. The junction is popularly referred to as the Ajantha Junction, named after a hotel that was situated in the road.“Most are the vehicles are rashly driven to tide over the cars pouring in from all directions. Pedestrians, especially senior citizens, have a tough time to cross that junction. There definitely has to be a signal to regulate traffic. I am scared to step out in the evenings,” said a 71-year-old Lakshmi, a resident of the area. Only a regulated movement of vehicles can ensure pedestrians their safety while crossing the road. Also, there is a police booth but it is very rarely manned, says Venkateswaran, another senior resident of Lloyds Road.Besides traffic congestion, the junction is also witness to an increasing number of road accidents. Ahmed, who runs a stationary store adjoining the junction, said he had seen at least 10 road accidents in the junction in the last year, and half of them were major. The only solution to it was to have traffic police in the place to restrict the speed and movement of the vehicles, he opined.The four main schools in the locality, namely Gill Adrash on VM street, Malathi Matriculation in Balaji Nagar, Cambridge Matriculation and Adarsh Vidhyalaya on Lloyds road, ensure a steady flow of vehicular and cycle traffic on the roads. Everyday there are so many children who travel on two wheelers and cycles and have to cross this junction to reach their destinations. “They usually remain in a fix because they do not know which vehicle will turn on which side and when. So many children arrive late to school because of these traffic bottlenecks,” said a school official.Nivitha, who lives on Lloyds Road, said the road was getting busier since the AIADMK headquarters has become a beehive of activity after its electoral success. Murali, 47, an auto driver in the Ajanta corner, however, said that the traffic signal would be no solution to the area’s traffic woes. “If there is a signal, it will become more congested than now. I have been watching this junction for seven years. They did try setting up a signal but it failed miserably.”
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