NOT A SMOOTH RIDE: A large pothole confronts motorists on Cross Cut Road in the city. Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

COIMBATORE: Coimbatoreans' favourite shopping hub - Cross Cut Road - is a picture of chaos as infrastructure development remains elusive for more than three decades.

Five major shopping complexes, a number of branded readymade garment, textile and jewellery shops, five hotels and various other establishments dealing with diverse products are located choc-a-bloc along the entire stretch. But those doing business here for over three decades say the road has remained the same throughout these years.

"Only business has improved vastly," says a textile merchant with over a decade's business operations on this road. "No other improvement has taken place." The main problem is that the 1.2-km stretch from Gandhipuram Junction to the North Coimbatore Flyover is still under the Other District Roads (ODR) category.

Official sources say it needs Rs. 40 lakhs for a facelift but will get only Rs. 4.8 lakhs, at the rate of Rs. 4 lakhs a km under the ODR category.

Faulty categorisation

Faulty categorisation equates the road in a busy commercial centre in the heart of the city with the ones in the rural pockets of the district. That explains the plight of motorists, shoppers and even business establishments who have to make do with a narrow congested stretch made worse by haphazard parking.

Heavy rain that pelted right through last year left the road with potholes end-to-end. With paltry funds, all that the Highways Department could do was to fill the potholes and leave the rest to the motorists' luck.

Phenomenal growth

What offers hopes of improvement is that the department has taken up the case of the road with the Government, especially the need to change the categorisation for more funds.

Meanwhile, this growing business hub gets increasingly choked. A doctor who has a hospital close to the western end of the road since 1989 says the first shift of business to Cross Cut Road was in the Seventies when traders moved out of the congested Mill Road.

But the road quality, width and parking space had never matched the pace of business growth and customer flow.

Traders say the November 1997 riots and the February 1998 serial blasts turned the till then popular shopping zone of Oppanakara Street and Town Hall communally sensitive.

It made more buyers shift to Cross Cut Road. A number of textile, jewellery, home appliances and departmental stores also came up.

The growth over the last five years is phenomenal but facilities for the shopping public remains poor, says a jeweller with a flow of 100 customers a day and Rs. 1 lakh business. "Unless some alternative parking space is found, road development cannot take off."

A tailor who set up shop in December 1983, and has more than 50 customers a day, says the road must be widened as more multi-storeyed shopping complexes are in the pipeline. But if a centralised parking facility is not created, the road will remain chaotic. (The Corporation's proposal for a multi-tier facility is yet to take off.)

However, shop owners avoid comment on violation of building rules, especially non-provision of mandatory parking space in multi-storeyed buildings.

Enforcement of rules and more funds for the road's upkeep are seen as the only solution.

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