The Dr. MGR BusTerminus in Koyambeu, which had witnessed a mad rush of commuters wanting to leave the city on Monday, was quite normal on Tuesday.
With the lockdown coming into effect from 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the Transport Department, which came in for criticism for not operating adequate number of buses on Monday, had made available a good number of buses.
Passengers wanting to leave the city had assembled in bus stops at Taramani, Velachery, Tambaram, and Perungalathur to take the long distance buses. Buses from STC Villupuram operated from Adyar Indira Nagar depot were packed with commuters.
L. Abishek, who had postponed his travel after not getting any bus on Monday, said there were quite a number of buses operated on Tuesday and the buses were not packed with commuters.
A senior official of the State Transport department said more than 500 buses of State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) and Villupuram State Transport Corporation were operated from the city to various destinations.
Many buses were empty
The senior official said unlike the scenes witnessed on Monday night, the authorities had to operate over 400 MTC buses to various places such as Kancheepuram, Tiruvannamalai and Tiruchi on Tuesday and most of the long distance buses did not even have minimum passengers. However, the transport authorities shut the Koyambedu bus terminus by 4 p.m. well ahead of the lockdown time of 6 p.m.
