Residents in the city suburbs have many public transport options — buses, small buses, suburban trains and the Metro — but when it comes to travelling on Sundays, the going is not so good.
Heading out on public transport systems over weekends has become either tiresome or costly for commuters because of the shortage of public transport facilities. On the highly populated Tambaram-Chennai Beach section, train commuters have to wait for more than 30 minutes for a train on Sundays, and when the train arrives, it is packed.
Regulars also complained about the absence of cross sectoral train services from Velachery to Avadi, Tiruvallur and Arakkonam, on Sundays.
Unlike the Metro
V. Rama Rao, an office bearer of the Traffic and Transport Forum, said while the Chennai Metro, in order to encourage patronage on Sunday, has been taking steps, including slashing the ticket price by 50% and operating more services on weekends, it hasn’t been the same with other public transport operators. Both the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) and the Southern Railway curtail their services on Sundays, leaving commuters inconvenienced. Commuters residing in the southern and western suburbs, including Vengaivasal, Mambakkam, Chitlapakkam, Nanganallur, Old Pallavaram, Thiruneermalai, Moulivakkam, Valasaravakkam, Nerkundram, and beyond Ambattur and Avadi, complain that they are forced to wait for at least 30 to 40 minutes to board a suburban train or bus to reach any destination in the city, or visit any tourist attraction. In few localities, residents find buses not being operated on Sundays at all.
Dependent on share autos
K.S. Kannan, a resident of Mugalivakkam, said that although the locality is situated only a few kilometres from Porur, the thickly-populated residential area suffers from poor services from public transport utilities. The situation is further exacerbated on Sundays when the residents find hardly any buses plying, against the few services that are operated on weekdays. With scanty public transport facilities available on Mugalivakkam Main Road, which links residents with Mount Poonamallee High Road, residents are forced to depend on ‘share autos’ that charge exorbitantly for a ride of a few kilometres, Mr. Kannan rued.
Residents complained of shortage of bus services, including M51V (Sholinganallur to T. Nagar via Vengaivasal), 51V (Kolathur to T. Nagar via Mambakkam), D51 (Ottiambakkam to Broadway via Medavakkam), B51 (Tambaram East to T. Nagar) and M18C (Keelkattalai to T. Nagar via Nanganallur), on Sundays. S. Raghunathan, a resident of Sowmya Nagar in Vengaivasal, said residents on Perumbakkam Main Road bound for the city have only one M51V bus service, which does not have adequate frequency even on weekdays. As a result, residents are forced to hire an autorickshaw to reach Medavakkam, as not even ‘share autos’ are available on Sundays, he complained.
A senior official of the MTC denied the commuters’ charge that only half of the 3,500-strong fleet of buses is operated on Sundays. He said that services of more than 2,200 buses were being operated on Sundays despite poor patronage on several routes, leading to revenue losses for the transport corporation.
The MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System) has become a boon for several residential localities — their inhabitants can visit the Marina Beach and various temples along the route on Sundays. But commuters complained that the Southern Railway regularly halted train services for more than six hours citing maintenance work.
A senior Railway official said that, on Sundays, the number of trains operated on the Tambaram-Chennai Beach route was 200, against the weekday services of 226. On the MRTS, 96 trips were run on Sundays, as against the 140 services normally operated on weekdays.
