Commuters from various places in south Chennai are distressed by Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s move to gradually reduce or cancel direct services to Broadway over the years. Several services operated by the Corporation had helped commuters reduce travel time by relieving them of the trouble of changing buses to reach Broadway via Anna Salai. However, of late, commuters, particularly office-goers, are forced to take a minimum of two buses to reach Central Railway Station and beyond and, in some cases, even three buses.
Several popular direct bus services bound for Broadway from Tambaram, Medavakkam, Velachery and Keelkattalai were operated bearing route numbers 18A, A18, D51, A51, 52K and 18D. However, the number of Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) services in these direct bus routes have been slowly and silently reduced and in the case of bus service D51 (Medavakkam to Broadway), the service has been completely stopped.
S. Raghunathan, a regular commuter from Medavakkam, said the D51 bus service was supposed to be a good revenue earner for the MTC as the buses were always full. But its cancellation has forced commuters proceeding towards Central Railway Station and Broadway to depend on A51 (Tambaram to Broadway), which has also been reduced.
He rued that commuters had to take two buses to reach their destinations and forced them to fork out more on ticket charges. “MTC earns more now through commuters paying for tickets in two or three buses that they are forced to take,” he alleged. Similarly the residents of Tambaram, Perungalathur, and Guduvanchery, who had a stress-free journey to Broadway because of the abundant bus services bearing 18A (Tambaram to Broadway) and A18 (Vandalur to Broadway), are now getting used to taking other bus routes. For commuters of Velachery, the change of origin of 1G (Velachery-Tiruvottiyur) route to Madipakkam came as a rude shock. “We thought the number of buses in the route would be increased since it was quite popular. Instead, it originates in Madipakkam now and the number of services have been reduced too,” said R. Sampath, a resident.
A senior official of MTC said the reason some of these bus services were reduced or cancelled was because of the Metro Rail work which caused undue delay in operating bus services on time.
