Motorists complain of poor lighting on OMR; TNRDC to install lights

Motorists are complaining that there is insufficient street lighting on several portions of the arterial Rajiv Gandhi Salai also known as Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). The service lanes that have been badly damaged hardly get any light from the focus lamps installed by Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL). 

With people driving on the wrong side in the service lanes and pedestrians trying to find some safe space, it is difficult for vehicle users to drive safely.

“I manage to spot the potholes and broken slabs with lights from the shops in the lane. If the shops are closed, darkness shrouds the lanes,”  said Kalaivani, a resident of PTC Quarters.

Allavudeen, an autorickshaw driver, said,  “Bigger vehicles — cars and buses — manage with their bright head lights. But autorickshaw drivers like me have to depend on the small yellow bulb lamps in our vehicles. I fixed an LED light, but had to remove it as a policeman caught me and told  I was not allowed to have LED lights.”

Co-founder of Fomrra, Harsha Koda, said ever since CMRL started their metro work, there has not been proper street lighting on the main carriageway of OMR.

“They [CMRL] hit our faces with powerful spotlights in the guise of workplace lights and when they finished the track laying works,  they  installed LEDs 40 feet to 50 feet above the road, which are not powerful enough to light up the road. All this while the street light posts are rusting near the old Perungudi toll plaza,” he said.

Luminosity study

A former Highways engineer suggests that a luminosity study  needs to be taken up throughout the city. “The department conducted one over a decade ago. But that was the first and last one. This will help agencies to decide where lights are needed and at what heights they must be placed to provide uniform lighting to all road users,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company(TNRDC), which manages Rajiv Gandhi Salai, said that it would install lights on the median on stretches where the construction of Metrorail has been completed.

“For every km, there will be 33 lamp posts and each post will have two LED bulbs on either side. We will also study the possibility of installing lights on the service lanes,” said a source in the TNRDC.