{"id":3205,"date":"2016-07-06T10:15:59","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T10:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faceinews.com\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2016-07-06T10:15:59","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T10:15:59","slug":"besant-nagar-no-place-for-pedestrians-ward-no-176","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/?p=3205","title":{"rendered":"Besant Nagar, no place for Pedestrians \u2014 Ward No. 176"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WardWatch_2921780f\"<\/a>The past few years have not been kind to people in Ward 176 in Besant Nagar.<\/p>\n

Once a quiet locality, it is now a thriving shopping and recreation hub and sees hundreds of visitors every weekend. With cars and motorcycles crowding in, it\u2019s not only the roads that are lined with vehicles, but pavements too leaving residents with no space to walk, residents say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot go out of the house after 6 p.m.,\u201d said V. Chandrasekhar, a retired professor and resident of 25 Cross Street. \u201cPavements have vanished and senior citizens dread walking on the roads. The new wide pavements built on 2 Avenue are being used like roads by two-wheelers. Vendors and hawkers are on them, and on others, construction material is dumped,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dharmesh Shah, a resident of 28 Cross Street said that parking on the streets leading to the beach was common. \u201cThe side streets get so jammed that people cannot walk. Cars and bikes speed across these roads. It\u2019s a nightmare for pedestrians,\u201d he said, adding that excessive commercialisation had taken place in the locality.<\/p>\n

Other residents complained of being forced to walk in the middle of the road, of footpaths being occupied with parked vehicles, junction boxes and cables on pavements and of not being able to cross the streets.<\/p>\n

Poor lighting in streets<\/b><\/p>\n

Another issue in the locality, said C. Vijayalakshmi, was poor street-lighting. \u201cThe lights in many of the streets don\u2019t work and the area remains dark. It is not safe and anything can happen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

With a large number of visitors coming in every weekend, backyards of apartment complexes are becoming open toilets, said Mr. Chandrasekshar. The \u2018bio-toilet\u2019 set up by the Chennai Corporation near the bus depot is a failure, said Kamakshi Subramaniyan, a resident of 4 Avenue. \u201cPeople just think they can urinate all over it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

AIADMK councillor S. Valliammal said that encroachments on pavements were a problem but that it was being dealt with as much as possible. \u201cA lot of the vendors have court orders,\u201d she said. On the streetlights, she said about 80 per cent were working and complaints were attended too. The bio-toilets need a dedicated worker for their maintenance, she said, but the Corporation had not allotted anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past few years have not been kind to people in Ward 176 in Besant Nagar. Once a quiet locality, it is now a thriving shopping and recreation hub and sees hundreds of visitors every weekend. With cars and motorcycles crowding in, it\u2019s not only the roads that are lined with vehicles, but pavements too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3207,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faceinews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}