Fresh complaints from Vandalur to Guduvanchery have revived an old GST Road problem: public investment can expand a highway, but only continuous management can keep that capacity available to motorists, buses and pedestrians.
Roadside encroachments, commercial parking and blocked pedestrian space are again being blamed for congestion along parts of GST Road on Chennai’s southern metropolitan edge, raising a larger question about whether authorities are managing the corridor after investing substantially in additional road capacity.
A LiveChennai report published on August 17 identified Vandalur, Otteri, Kilambakkam, Urapakkam, Guduvanchery, Vallanchery and Thailavaram among affected locations. It reported commercial activity spilling towards the road, motorcycles associated with showrooms occupying roadside space in Guduvanchery and pedestrians being pushed off obstructed footpaths.
Taken alone, this could appear to be another traffic-congestion story.
It is not.
The same corridor has already undergone widening, previous encroachment removal and multiple traffic-management interventions. That makes the current problem an accountability test: can agencies protect the usable road space after creating it?
Capacity was expanded, but capacity must also be protected
GST Road is one of the principal southern approaches to the Chennai metropolitan region. It carries long-distance traffic alongside buses, private vehicles, local trips and pedestrian movements.
Its physical capacity has been expanded substantially.
The Guduvanchery–Chettipunyam section was widened as part of an NHAI-backed programme, while the wider Vandalur–Chettipunyam works received an allocation of ₹275.17 crore. The widening programme included carriageway expansion as well as drainage and junction works.
That investment addressed one part of the congestion equation: road geometry and capacity.
But road capacity is not simply the width constructed.
Operational capacity depends on whether lanes, shoulders, service roads, junction approaches and pedestrian space remain usable.
When a roadside lane becomes parking, a service road becomes commercial frontage or pedestrians are displaced into traffic, the effective width available for movement falls even though the engineering width remains unchanged.
This is why encroachment management is not a cosmetic activity. It is part of highway operations.
Guduvanchery has been cleared before
The newest complaints are particularly significant because authorities have already dealt with encroachment on this corridor.
In July 2024, highway officials began removing shops, billboards and other encroachments from the Guduvanchery GST service-road area following directions from the Chengalpattu District Collector. Officials said the action was intended to address congestion and that stricter action would follow against future occupation.
Two years later, complaints have resurfaced in the same wider corridor.
Urban Acres could not independently establish whether the precise locations cleared in 2024 are the same locations cited in the latest report. Nor has a publicly accessible parcel-by-parcel enforcement record been located.
But the recurrence raises a governance issue irrespective of that distinction.
One-time removal is not equivalent to long-term right-of-way management.
A durable system requires:
survey → legal verification → notice → clearance → physical protection → monitoring → enforcement → recurrence tracking.
If that chain ends after demolition or removal, the corridor remains vulnerable to gradual reoccupation.
Congestion has more than one cause
There is also a risk of oversimplifying the problem.
Encroachments may reduce usable space, but they are not the only explanation for congestion around Vandalur and Kilambakkam.
A May 2026 examination of the corridor found severe congestion associated with multiple traffic streams converging near the Kalaignar Centenary Bus Terminus. Vehicles from the Outer Ring Road merge with GST Road traffic, while government buses, private buses and local traffic make turning and U-turn movements around the terminus.
That distinction is important for policy.
Removing roadside parking may recover highway capacity.
It will not automatically redesign problematic merges, bus movements or junction geometry.
GST Road therefore requires two parallel responses:
protect existing capacity and repair structural bottlenecks.
Treating one as a substitute for the other would reproduce the same congestion through a different mechanism.
Kilambakkam changed the transport load on this corridor
The opening and operation of the Kalaignar Centenary Bus Terminus added another major metropolitan transport function to an already heavily used national-highway corridor.
CMDA has acknowledged the resulting traffic challenge and has pursued additional infrastructure around the terminus. Its published material describes an NHAI high-level flyover concept from Vandalur junction towards Kattankulathur intended to address congestion in the area.
Separately, CMDA launched construction in 2024 of a 220-metre flyover across GST Road associated with connectivity between the bus-terminus area and the Kilambakkam railway-station side, with an estimated cost of ₹79 crore.
These interventions illustrate the larger problem facing GST Road: it now functions simultaneously as a national highway, metropolitan arterial, bus-terminal access corridor and neighbourhood street interface.
Those functions generate conflicting demands.
Highway traffic wants uninterrupted movement.
Buses need turning and stopping space.
Businesses need access.
Residents need crossings.
Pedestrians need continuous footpaths.
Local vehicles need side-road connections.
Managing those interfaces is fundamentally different from simply adding lanes.
Pedestrians are the clearest test of whether the corridor works
The LiveChennai report says footpath occupation is forcing some pedestrians into the road.
That should be treated as a road-safety issue, not merely an inconvenience.
A highway corridor through an urbanised area cannot be evaluated only by vehicle throughput. Wherever homes, shops, terminals and public transport generate pedestrian movement, walking facilities become part of the transport system.
The Kilambakkam area has already demonstrated that tension. Earlier reporting documented pedestrians crossing the busy GST Road around the bus terminus while dedicated grade-separated crossing infrastructure was being developed.
The test for authorities is therefore not simply whether vehicles move faster after an enforcement drive.
It is whether:
- carriageways stay unobstructed;
- footpaths remain continuously usable;
- bus movements are organised;
- pedestrian crossings are safe;
- emergency access is protected; and
- encroachments do not return after clearance.
The institutional problem is inherently shared
NHAI itself has acknowledged that encroachment and unauthorised parking on National Highways require coordination beyond a single agency.
In June, the authority said it had identified 595 critical unauthorised-parking locations nationally and was working with State governments, district administrations and enforcement agencies. It also referred to District Highway Safety Task Forces and designated nodal officers as mechanisms for continuing compliance.
That framework is directly relevant to GST Road.
Road ownership does not by itself deliver enforcement.
A national-highway authority may control the right-of-way, while district authorities, police, local bodies and transport agencies control adjacent land use, parking, commercial enforcement, traffic circulation or local access.
For residents, these institutional boundaries are invisible.
They experience one corridor.
Urban governance therefore has to manage it as one corridor.
What should be published now
The immediate requirement is not another generic anti-encroachment announcement.
Authorities should publish a corridor-level enforcement ledger covering at least the Vandalur–Guduvanchery–Kattankulathur belt.
For each obstruction it should identify:
- location;
- type of obstruction;
- road or footpath ownership;
- whether the occupation is legally authorised;
- notice date;
- responsible enforcement agency;
- removal date;
- repeat-encroachment status;
- action against unauthorised parking;
- pedestrian-space restoration;
- photographs before and after action.
That would distinguish episodic clearance from continuous management.
The same dashboard should record traffic speeds and junction delays before and after enforcement. Without outcome data, authorities cannot establish whether removing an obstruction materially improved the corridor.
The real measure is usable capacity
GST Road illustrates a recurring Indian urban-infrastructure problem.
Cities frequently measure what they construct—lanes, flyovers, drains and terminals—but less consistently measure whether those assets remain fully usable once operations begin.
A highway widened at substantial public cost can lose part of its functional capacity without a single lane physically disappearing.
Parking can consume it.
Commercial activity can consume it.
Badly controlled junctions can consume it.
Unsafe pedestrian conditions can turn it into conflict space.
The correct accountability measure is therefore not simply:
How wide is GST Road?
It is:
How much of that road and pedestrian space remains continuously available for the purpose for which taxpayers funded it?
That is the delivery test now facing GST Road.
