The clock read 11.40 on a frenetic Monday morning. Steady streams of passengers walk out of the arrival lounge of Chennai Airport's international terminal. The newly launched air-conditioned coaches of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) lay parked in the vicinity.
It started as an attempt to travel in one of the four 16-seater buses to either Anna Nagar or Egmore, which are the two routes along which MTC has been operating its airport link service for a fortnight.
The official operational schedule showed that two buses were expected to leave within the next half an hour. But no bus would leave for the next 90 minutes.
“We can't operate a bus for just 3-4 passengers. The expenditure on diesel alone is about Rs.500 for a round trip,” said R.Nagendran, the MTC time-keeper at the airport.
Two passengers waited for a while and finally took a taxi, most people were completely unaware of the service and the air-conditioned coaches just stood there all the time – their engines silent. In the end, the airport link service ended up highlighting many of the problems that plague Chennai's public transport system in general – limited frequency of service, poor planning and bad marketing.
Mr.Nagendran complains that a fleet of at least 20 buses is required. “There are 1,000 private taxis inside the terminal. How can we compete with just four buses?” he asks.
Even the four buses were originally used for the hop-on-hop-off services to tourist destinations. The service was cancelled ostensibly because it was a loss-making venture. The airport link service is headed in the same direction. On an average, only around 80 persons use the buses that shuttle to and from the airport each day. MTC earns a daily revenue of less than Rs.10,000.
When Chennai's chronic lack of connectivity to major rail and air terminals is compared with other cities, the difference is striking. Bangalore has a dedicated fleet of 40 Vayu Vajra AC buses that ply along 12 routes from the airport. All airport employees can also avail of monthly passes.
Even Delhi, despite the presence of a Metro Airport Express Line, has better bus connectivity to the airport than Chennai, with check-in facilities available at boarding points in some cases. Apart from Delhi and Bangalore, Hyderabad also has a 24-hour bus services linking the airport to multiple points.
“The basic problem in Chennai is that public transit is still being viewed as charity and not as a service,” says Shreya Gadepalli of the Ahmedabad-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
She says the problem is going to get worse as the Chennai Airport is expected to attract 23 million passengers annually by 2016. Unless public transport is improved drastically, many of them are going to come by a car.
A study by the City Connect Foundation, an NGO, shows that about 90,000 cars leave the airport terminal each week, adding to traffic management and parking problems.
MTC Managing Director S. Bhoopathy admits that other cities have implemented much better systems. “There was some resistance to even allocate a stall for us inside the airport premises. Service frequency is a problem and instructions would be given shortly to ensure no passenger is made to wait for more than 10 minutes.
Things would improve by the time the new airport terminal gets inaugurated in March, 2012. There would be separate bus bay inside the terminal which can be used by all MTC buses,” he says.
This article has been corrected for redundancy
