October 4 to be Chennai’s first car free Sunday
Elliot’s beach promenade, a few interior lanes likely locations
By : pradeep kumar
Update: 2015-09-15 07:08 GMT
Chennai: The Chennai corporation is likely to host the city’s first car free Sunday programme on October 4, sources said. Car free Sundays, a concept inspired from the Western world, where streets are closed for vehicular traffic for a few hours on Sunday morning and instead pedestrian activity is encouraged, is all set to happen in Chennai under the ‘Namma Chennai Namakke’ moniker, as reported by Deccan Chronicle.
The location for the car free Sunday has been fixed as Eliot’s Beach in Besant Nagar and will include not just the promenade but a few interior streets as well. “The programme will be held between 6 and 9 in the morning,” said Aswathy Dilip of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), who is putting together the event.
Last month, the concept was tried out for the first time in the state in Coimbatore. “More than 15,000 people turned up but it was also clogged because the space given to us was too limited,” Aswathy added.
“The area proposed for the programme includes the Elliot’s promenade and a few of the avenues in Besant Nagar, including the second avenue which is a bus route road. But the
idea is that Chennai being a big city, and with too many residents expected to participate, ideally we should be given a larger area. After all, it is Sunday morning and there will be less traffic,” she said.
“If the traffic police continue to hesitate, then we will start off with whatever area we are given in the hope that, after looking at the turnout, they will make available more space going forward.
But I am also concerned, if the streets are clogged up, then participants may develop a wrong idea about the concept,” she added. Senior traffic authorities, who are in the loop about the programme, could not be reached for comment.