Fixing a High-Risk Junction with Project Rakshak at Taramani IIT Gate, Chennai

The site

The IIT Madras gate at Taramani sits on a corridor that moves campus traffic, BPO commuter flows and arterial through-traffic in the same window. Team Sentinels, a student squad under Project Rakshak, spent two weeks walking and timing the junction.

It is a three-road T-junction on a heavily used urban corridor, with a steady mix of pedestrians, two- and three-wheelers, autos, cars and mini-trucks all day. Risk peaks consistently between 8–10 AM and 5–8 PM. A temple abutting the junction tightens the space further, drawing pedestrian spillover and sudden congestion during festivals. Chennai recorded 5,034 road crashes in 2021 and 3,452 in 2022, ranking among the most affected million-plus cities — and most of that danger lives outside the headline blackspots, in junctions just like this one.

What the audit found

Across pedestrians, riders, drivers and shopkeepers, there was striking consistency in how the junction was described. Navigating it was rated Very Difficult, and collision risk Very High. At the centre of the problem sits a blind left turn near the temple, where sight distance is critically restricted — road users have almost no visibility of oncoming traffic until the final moment, turning routine movements into near-miss situations.

• No pedestrian phase

  The signal cycle has no dedicated walk interval for students crossing the gate.
• Faded markings

  Stop lines and lane markings have worn off; drivers improvise lane discipline.
• Absent advance signage

  No school/campus zone warning ahead of the junction.
• Encroached footpath

  Vendors and parked autos push pedestrians into the carriageway.
• Blind temple turn

  Zero sight distance at the left turn near the temple — pure guesswork.
• No junction control

  No signals, no signage, no priority — movement runs on informal negotiation.

Why speed is hard to judge

Speed management at Taramani IIT Gate is not just inadequate — it is actively unsafe. The existing speed breaker is uneven, non-compliant with IRC standards, and forces abrupt braking and sudden swerves. The road surface compounds the danger: potholes and uneven patches demand last-second manoeuvres, sharply raising the chance of skids and falls in the rain. At night, poor or non-functional street lighting multiplies the risk further.

What stakeholders agreed on — without disagreement

Different users experience the junction differently, but their concerns converged on the same core failures:

Proposed interventions

Based on a road safety audit aligned with IRC SP:88and stakeholder inputs, Team Sentinels proposed a low-cost, high-impact framework focused on immediate risk reduction — no waiting for signalisation or grand redesigns:

• Pedestrian phase

  Insert an all-red 15s phase aligned with class and shift changeovers.
• Repaint and rumble

  Repaint stop lines and add rumble strips on the IIT approach.
• Advance signage

  Yellow campus-zone boards 100m before the junction in both directions.
• Footpath reclamation

  Bollards and clear hawker zoning to restore the walking lane.
• Convex mirror

  A 90–100 cm convex mirror at the blind turn to restore sight distance.
• Table-top breaker

  Replace the broken speed breaker with an IRC-compliant flat-topped speed table doubling as a raised crossing.
• Surface repair

  Pothole filling and resurfacing of approach roads.

Voices from the corridor

What happens next

The Team Sentinels report has been submitted to Chennai Traffic Police and GCC engineering. Project Rakshak will return in six months to audit what was implemented — and publish the scorecard.

Safer streets are not created by waiting for crashes to demand attention. They are created by recognising risk early — and acting before guesswork turns into harm.