Ramps for luge athletes on East Coast Road?

Between Panaiyur and Mahabalipuram on East Coast Road, inclusive bus shelters really do not help the differently abled. This section of ECR is maintained by TNRDC; three of these bus shelters are found within GCC limits

The bus shelter at Uthandi where what looks like a descent ramp is broken and truncated. Besides, the floor of the shelter is too narrow and the pillars too close apart for a wheelchair to be moved around comfortably. The image was taken on January 30, 2026. | Photo Credit: PRINCE FREDERICK

Would anyone in their right mind ask a wheelchair-bound person to perform the manoeuvres of a luge athlete? Two line agencies throw a gauntlet as ridiculous as that to the wheelchair-bound on a section of East Coast Road (ECR), one agency doing the actual throwing and the other in a position to countermand it, doing an Ostrich.

On ECR, between Panaiyur and Mahabalipuram, one would come upon these quaint-looking bus shelters with pitched, corrugated metal roofs and concrete benches. And if the zooming lens is held closer, one would see ramps, actually what passes off for ramps.

Let us narrow down the focus to three bus stops (the wheels moving in the direction of Mahabalipuram) on the section of ECR between Panaiyur and Uthandi alone, just to make sure the two line agencies are found in the same picture.

Enter Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC), a special purpose vehicle. TNRDC manages ECR from Akkarai to Mahabalipuram and is the architect of these bus shelters, which hold up against the elements commendably but score poorly on its inclusivity design quotient. Ramps exist, but not all ramps are easy to use. Besides, the overall design of these “inclusive bus shelters” ignores most facets of accessibility for the wheelchair-bound from the bus stop to the bus and vice versa; and these include sufficient space on the floor of the bus shelter and a mechanism for the commuter to slide their wheelchair from floor of the bus shelter straight on to the floor of the bus.

These bus shelters instead have two components, an ascent ramp and a descent ramp, the latter hard to use by anyone, let alone the wheelchair-bound.