With the newly laid stormwater drain on East Abhiramapuram First Street taking a curvaceous course on sections of the street to protect trees, the girth of the carriageway has reduced. Given this, one-way rule on the road has to be enforced with an iron hand. The image was taken on October 9, 2025.
| Photo Credit: PRINCE FREDERICK
In volume one of the allegorical Prayer Of The Frog (a collection of stories from a multiplicity of geographical coordinates) Anthony de Mello presents the story of a girl who spares a clump of daisies while mowing the lawn at home. Her father pays her for the chore, and is willing to fork out extra money if she brought that patch with daisies too under the rotating blades of the lawn mower. She turns down the offer, and that is the cost (a forgone reward) she pays for caring.
On East Abhiramapuram First Street, “daisies” have been protected. And the cost of that altruism is being borne by motorists, not all of them, but those abiding conscientiously by the one-way rule clamped on the street long ago as part of CMRL-related traffic diversions.
Stormwater drain skirts around a tree on East Abhiramapuram First Street. The image was taken on October 9, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK
The stormwater drain work at East Abhiramapuram First Street has taken a commendable turn, sometimes at wildly geometric angles to save old, fully grown trees. This heart-warming act of mercy and environmental responsibility has come with a cost, reduced carriageway on sections of the road. In a pre-CMRL world, this would have meant little in terms of traffic movement. Vehicles would have rolled on opposite sides as if nothing had happened. Metro Rail work-related traffic diversions hitting this street as they did many other streets in the Mylapore, Mandaveli and surrounding areas, it had to be made a one-way and it would stay that way until the time Metro Rail trains arrive in this region.
As part of the diversion, MTC buses trundle down the East Abhiramapuram First Street, often in a barrage. Not a problem if everyone abided by the one-way diktat. But this rule has turned out to be as delicate as glass and it is shattered in every successive blink of the eye.
The stormwater drain skirts around trees at East Abhiramapuram First Street. The image was taken on October 9, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK
This violation could be tolerated when the road width was intact. But now, with a newly laid SWD taking bites out of it, the one-way rule has to be enforced with an iron hand. Sridhar Venkataraman, a resident of East Abhiramapuram is on the same page about this: and he thinks the need to enforce the one-way arrangement is urgent.
Urgently needed: traffic marshals
“It is supposed to be a one-way, but not treated as one. From the road user experience at other interior roads that have been swept into Metro Rail-related traffic diversions, CMRL has a huge role in its traffic management. But CMRL has not stationed a marshal on this road. At this point, none of the traffic signs is visible; nothing to tell drivers it is a one-way,” says Sridhar. “And the motoring public does not care. Ranga Road has a one-way direction from C.P. Ramaswamy Road side, but that is ignored. Due to lack of traffic directions, Ramachandra Road and Justice Sundaram Road face traffic jams throughout the day. The public have to adhere to rules even in the absence of monitoring. But the hard pill to swallow is that in the absence of monitoring, there is usually little adherence to rules.”
At the time of this article being published online — which is the morning of October 10, 2025 — the one-way traffic rule was still being violated with impunity, and no traffic regulation was in place.
Published – October 10, 2025 10:47 am IST
