MRTS extension delayed further

The issue of extension of the final leg of Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), from Velachery to St. Thomas Mount, has once again not been addressed in the Railway Budget.

The proposal has been pending for close to a decade now.

Commuters of

parakkum rail or

maadi rail , as the MRTS is also known, wonder if the extension of the service will ever become a reality.

St. Thomas Mount resident Yasmin Manasseh, teacher at a private school in Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, says, “I spend a lot of time travelling to and fro from school, where my children also study. We get delayed at traffic bottlenecks in Guindy and Madhya Kailash and have been waiting for the extension a long time.”

The first phase of MRTS from Chennai Beach to Chepauk was commissioned in 1995 and extended to Mylapore in 1997. It was extended to Velachery a decade later.

The line, which connects 18 stations, has 134 services and benefits close to a lakh passengers a day.

According to V. Subramani, project director of Traffic and Transportation Forum, MRTS is not utilised up to even 30 per cent of its capacity.

“MRTS was originally planned to transport at least 6 lakh passengers a day, but due to delays in extension and lack of good amenities, continues to be under-utilised,” he says.