CHENNAI: After 10 years, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) has resumed services along certain routes which connect prominent transit hubs with southern and western suburbs.
Services along these routes were stopped during the previous AIADMK government, alleged transport minister R S Rajakannappan.
For instance, there was not a single direct MTC bus from Nanganallur to transit points such as Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT) in Koyambedu or the terminus in Broadway.
Buses, which ply along routes 52K (Nanganallur-Broadway), 70N (Nanganallur-CMBT) and M18C (Keelkatalai-T Nagar), were stopped citing poor patronage. MTC earlier claimed that operating these buses resulted in losses as less than less than 30-40 passengers travelled in these buses per hour.
From Saturday, services resumed on all these three routes. Similarly, in the western suburbs, services were resumed along these routes —166 (Iyyappanthangal-Tambaram), 88C (Thandalam-Broadway), 188C (Kundrathur-Broadway) and 566 (Kundrathur-Thiruporur).
Besides this, the MTC introduced these new routes — 576 (Mount Metro Station-T Nagar), 188A (Kundrathur-T Nagar) and 109T (Thiruvottiyur-Kovalam) — to help people from the suburbs reach the city easily, according to an official release.
Welcoming this, V Rama Rao of Chennai-based Traffic and Transportation Forum, an NGO, said that without direct buses, Nanganallur residents had to pay ?40-?50 every morning to reach the main road for MTC buses. “The MTC should consider reviving small bus services in suburbs too. Instead of operating them parallel to regular buses, small buses can be operated along interior roads connecting areas such as Voltas Colony and Lakshmi Nagar with the main bus stand,” he added.
In response, MTC said that small bus services were started along new routes — S40 (Cowl Bazaar-Pallavaram), S165 (Kovur EB-Pallavaram) and S166 (Porur-Manimedu) — from Saturday. They will soon be expanded to interior areas depending on the response.
Regular bus users complain about the frequency of buses too. “There is no direct bus from CMBT to Tiruvallur (153A) in the evening peak hours (between 5.25pm and 8.25pm). Even late in the evening, there is only one bus for every 20-25 minutes,” said K Baskar, a resident-activist from Tiruvallur.
A senior MTC official agreed to look into it. “Generally, bus schedules are evenly spaced, but heavy traffic results in bus bunching,” he said. Bus bunching is the urban transit phenomenon in which two or more buses arrive at the same time instead of equal intervals.
