Stunted Sunday services affect passengers

Commuters in far flung areas of the southern and western parts of the city face difficulties on Sundays because of limited public transport facilities. Residents are unable to take buses as the MTC operates very limited services on Sundays.

The Southern Railway, meanwhile, finds time for taking up maintenance and infrastructure development works to be carried out only on Sundays, leading to the cancellation of several suburban train services, inconveniencing commuters.

The cancellation of train services due to line blockages in different sections, including the MRTS, and the Chennai Beach-Tambaram and Avadi sections, causes severe hardships to commuters in reaching their destination.

M. Rajendran, a resident of Tambaram, said that in the past one month, hundreds of suburban train services have been cancelled, forcing commuters to find other transport options.

MRTS too

Similar problems have been faced by commuters of the MRTS, where train services have been regularly cancelled on Sundays for four to six hours.

A senior official of the Southern Railway said maintenance work had become indispensable for avoiding technical snags during weekends, and also for construction works such as building underpasses and laying new tracks. Normally, line blocks can be undertaken only on Sundays as the railway time-table would otherwise be affected on weekdays. He said the Railways was at present operating special train services at regulated intervals to compensate for the cancelled train services.