JOIN USIf the best tribute to an old City lies in giving it an image makeover faster than its people change their long-held social mores, then the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) should take the cake.
Touch down in Chennai, India’s fourth largest city with the second longest beach in the world (Marina) and boasting about a population of over 8 million, you are more likely to go around in circles, as a critical and feverish phase of this new mass rail transit system project has just about taken off.
The bulky Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) recently shipped from China are the new “Raths”, the sub-surface Juggernauts, propelling the change. This has converted virtually half the stretches of the twin arterial roads in Chennai--the famous Mount Road, now known as Anna Salai, and the good old Madras-Bangalore Highway now called Periyar Salai-- to one-way traffic and linked to their peripheral roads through endless diversions.
In fact, much of the city, with an already high urban density, spreads like a vast construction yard, as job profiles on CMRL’s two distinct corridors – Washermenpet to Chennai airport (23.1 km) and Chennai Central to St. Thomas Mount (22 km)-- keep inching forward by incremental progress.
A majority of Chennai folks have to grin and bear, taking in their stride all the mobility-crippling hardships in the hope that Metro will change this Southern gateway’s face in next five years. And once the Monorail project also starts in Chennai – the first round of global tendering is to be finalised shortly--it may unravel a new utopia of making and unmaking. Only that nobody can surely mark out the tortoise from the hare!
A High School in Ashok Nagar close to the Metro Rail alignment suddenly found its laboratory gone one fine morning, while a good chunk of the city’s lung space – like Thiru Vi Ka Park in Shenoy Nagar, also the venue of many rallies by the Dravidian parties-- now finds its “vaastu” bullied by huge cranes and borers for building an underground terminal.
But more nightmarish propositions may follow, fear city heritage lovers and conservationists, with over 24 km of the Metro Rail’s total of 45.1 km in both corridors put together, to be laid underground.
As a joint venture company of the Central and Tamil Nadu Governments, the special purpose vehicle set up for executing this project, with a substantial loan component from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), enjoys fairly good credibility as it is very similar in design and functions to the highly successful Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
Nonetheless, these structural aspects themselves are not the ultimate arbiters in an ugly war of replacing the old for a new transportation order, more so when Chennai’s already existing Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), a 20-km long mostly elevated fast-rail from Madras Beach to Velacherry, suffering from utter neglect of even basic amenities.
The CMRL recently sent notices to house owners close to its underground section alignments, of the “need to close existing bore wells and open wells within a restricted zone of 16.5 metres on both sides from the centre of the alignment” to facilitate the tunneling work. This may just be the tip of the iceberg, fear city conservationists as there is no clue yet on the extent to which the Metro’s underground drainage system has to be altered.
Their angst gets even shriller as the fate of several heritage buildings along the CMRL’s track alignment turns uncertain. They are on the verge of being at least partly pulled down to make way for the mammoth tube. Informed sources, not wishing to be quoted, say that the “Bharat Insurance Building” alongside “Anna Salai”, where Metro Rail work has begun, is a classic case in point.
Other heritage buildings on Anna Salai itself like the structure that houses the
famous vintage watch company P Orr & Sons and the Lawrence Asylum Press just behind the “Poompuhar” (Tamil Nadu Handicrafts) showroom, face a to-live-or-not-to-live dilemma.
The Madras High Court recently ruled that only the front portion of the P Orr and Sons building on Mount Road was a Grade-I heritage building and held that Metro Rail could not be faulted for the
Authorities decision to pull down the building's 'rear portion' which was only a later addition. The Judges in this case even pulled up sections of the media for publishing articles regarding this building when the was matter sub judice.
The CMRL Authorities, for the record though, have promised steps to preserve the environment with more planting for every tree cut and protecting the embodiments of Chennai’s cultural and architectural history. Yet, even on the other main highway of “Periyar Salai” there are no clear answers on the tunneling effect on other heritage buildings dotting its sides.
Those set of buildings, some of them in the finest Indo-Saracenic architectural
tradition, include the Victoria Public Hall – just next to the Chennai Central Railway Station – and a somberly elegant Ripon Building.
No doubt the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has a Heritage Conservation Committee, even as Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage local chapter is very vibrant. The Chennai Corporation also recently announced it will constitute a special “A Cell to assist heritage building owners and conservationists in the renovation and maintenance of heritage structures.”
As more and more people push for the Metro Rail’s quick completion, Chennaiites hope all this pain now would be offset when the tube starts running.