CHENNAI: Following a complaint from Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), the state transport department has booked 436 share autos in and around the city for permit violationsm and operating on bus routes.
Share autos, though largely unregularized, have become one of the most preferred forms of public transport in the city. More people have begun preferring them over buses because they can get down or board at any desired location instead of waiting at poorly-maintained bus stands.
“Most bus stops in Chennai don’t have a proper roof. On top of that, officials have cut down frequencies of buses connecting the city with suburbs. How do they expect us to wait for 15 minutes or more in the scorching heat?” asked Amalraj Antony, a regular MTC bus user, who switched to share autos recently.
Against this backdrop, some auto drivers began fixing boards on windshields mentioning the same route numbers used by MTC in order to attract more crowds. Since this offset MTC’s losses and patronage, it filed a complaint with the transport department, which booked 436 share autos in the city for running parallel operations. In terms of penalty, 18.35 lakh was collected from share auto drivers, and among them, 88 vehicles were impounded as they failed to submit valid motor vehicle documents, according to official data. Instead of penalising or detaining share autos, experts said they want the share auto sector to be regularised. Despite transporting at least half a million people in Chennai every day, the government doesn’t have any data on people who drive these vehicles, details of routes on which they are operated and how much fare they can collect, said R Rengachari, a transportation activist.
He also said that though official rules bar vehicle owners from modifying interiors, nothing has stopped auto owners from fixing chairs wherever they want, covering up the roof with tarpaulin sheets or adding extensions.
