Median Watch: Let the traffic dividers on Gemini flyover show their true colours 

Median Watch: Some offbeat spotting from the roads of Chennai

As these images from October 13 illustrate, a majority of the plastic traffic dividers on Gemini flyover resemble personnel shovelling coal into the boiler unit of a steam locomotive — covered in soot, they are unrecognisable. The level of soot the traffic dividers have accumulated from passing vehicles is evident from how much they contrast with traffic dividers freshly inducted into the ranks. Traffic dividers come in fluorescent orange with a dab of white.

On Gemini flyover, these dividers are layered with black and dark-brown, so much so that the new ones that display the intended colours seem like imports from another planet. At night, it should take only a little lapse in attention to miss these sooty traffic dividers. To get these traffic dividers to display their true colours and be the safe ally they are meant to be, all that is required is a cleaning liquid and some cloth.

With Chepauk now being lit up regularly due to ODI cricket World Cup, the two fountains on Wallajah Road (one at the Wallajah Road-Victoria Hostel Road junction and the other at the Wallajah Road-Bells Road junction) blend neatly into the scenery. Just one factor takes a little away from one fountain’s appeal — that is the one at the Wallajah Road-Bells Road junction. Its container being of small dimensions, this fountain sprays water on to the road. Constant sogginess can likely cause the patch of the road closest to this fountain to get slippery after a period of time, and that is not greet for motorcycles and their riders. Besides, water in a fountain is recycled, and here the loss of water may be on a higher side. Either the dimensions of the fountain’s container should be widened to ensure water falls inside or the throw of the water jets in the fountain checked to ensure water does not fall outside. The fountain at the Wallajah Road-Bells Road junction on the night of October 11.

The short median on Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Devar Road at the junction that includes PS Kumaraswamy Raja Road wears an unkempt appearance. Rubble sits unchallenged. Iron roads jut out of a concrete block. They are a blight on the escutcheon, as this image from October 12 shows.