Traffic congestion at Padi junction on CTH Road in Chennai. File.
| Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam
Residents living along the busy Chennai Tirupathi High (CTH) Road from Padi to Thiruninravur have urged Chief Minister C. Vijay Joseph to direct the Highways department to take up widening of the 22 km road.The road with its many junctions, turns and curves, and thousands of commercial establishments and industrial units, remains a four-lane wide facility from 2013 though over 1.50 lakh vehicles take it daily. “On busy days, it takes us nearly two hours to cover the stretch with its curves and turns. Motorists cannot do more than 30 kmph on this narrow road. Smaller vehicles have to jostle for space among the heavy trucks that take this road from the industrial units in Ambattur, Padi and nearby industrial estates. Accidents are a common noun on this road as there is not enough policing,” said R. Raghunathan, a resident of Ambattur. Consumer activist and resident of Pattabiram T. Sadagopan said that roads like OMR, ECR and Thoraipakkam-Pallavaram Radial Road have taken much lesser time to widen. “Though this road connects us to Tirupathi, an important temple town in the neighbouring State, we don’t have a single bus service to Andhra Pradesh via this stretch. You can see raw sewage running on this State Highway.”“Every day new commercial establishments are coming up on both sides. But no provisions are being made for creating parking spaces. As a result, vehicles are haphazardly parked in front of the establishments. We don’t think any kind of planning permissions are given to these shops. Construction has been taken up in locations where the Highways department had made markings,” he said.Saravanan, a resident of Ambattur said that the road does not have a proper stormwater drain and many stretches her flooded during the rains. “Only haphazard work is taken up to restore normalcy. Every election, we will take up this widening with the political parties. But nothing happens. Local traders have been objecting to the widening and the Highways too has been just about maintaining the road.” The stretch that had been part of the Chennai - Tirupathi National Highway, was handed over to the State Highways by the National Highways Authority of India saying that widening it would not be possible due to urbanisation. In April 2013 former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had announced that the road would be widened into a six lane facility. The State government had also allocated ₹168 crore for the land acquisition. In December 2013, the highways department took up work to widen the stretch from end-to-end, meaning wherever land was available, at a cost of ₹98 crore and the road came to be as it is today. Sources in the Highways department said that the proposal to widen it was under their active consideration.Photo: Deepa H. Ramakrishnan Published - June 10, 2026 11:02 am IST
