I Fully endorse the views expressed by MR. MUTHIAH in his MADRAS MISCELLANY ON the integeration of public transport . I am of the firm opinion that facilities like METRO and MONO sans PROPER AND PUCCA interconnectivity between the existing public transport modes like city buses, EMU suberbun trains and MRTS will be of no use and serve no meaningful purpose in reducing congestion on our city road. I am sure CUMTA will understand the ground realities and findout ways and means for integerating the upcoming METRO RAIL with the existing public transport modes without any further loss of time…..
ANY further delay in this vital decision making will ultimately lead to chaos in city roads…. Because already METRO has occupied a chunk of available space in our public roads including arterial roads like Anna Salai….If we imagine a scenario where interconnectivity continue to remain a DREAM only, and all public transport continue to ply on parallel lines , even after commissioning of CHENNAI METRO TRANSPORT and MONO Lines , it will be a real nightmare for chennai people!!!!!!
CUMTA SHOUD TAKE A CALL RIGHT NOW ON THIS IMPORTANT ASPECT RATHER THAN WAITING FURTHER…. ARMED WITH SUITABLE LEGISLATIVE POWERS FROM 2010, CUMTA SHOUD WAKEUP ATLEAST NOW >>>>>>
I request likeminded chennaites and NGOS to spread this message and create an awareness in the Public Forum for making our chennai city road congestion free….
If there is will …there is way… that is what is the need of hour for CUMTA. Let us hope to realise our dream soon.
NATARAJAN
CHENNAI, May 6, 2012
Madras Miscellany: Integrating transport…IN THE HINDU
BY
S. MUTHIAH
I am told that legislation was passed in 2010 entitled the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority Act and an organisation called CUMTA, in abbreviation, was set up. Its aim was to integrate the City’s bus, train, suburban railway, Metro Rail, MRTS — now it will have to include Monorail, I suppose — and bus services to make travel easy for passengers through an interconnectivity of these services that CUMTA will ensure. In the two years since the Act was passed, we have, however, been unable to get an interconnectivity in the existing services, namely, the Metropolitan bus service, suburban train services, MRTS and the mainline railway services. A single ticket for a journey in Greater Madras, assuring a hop, step and a jump between one service and another, remains a dream. Just as it has been for decades.
My words of despair above have been prompted by the latest news that a Chennai Comprehensive Transport Study plan (Yes, another one!) commissioned by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has been handed over to CUMTA. This three-phase plan for Greater Madras envisages Rs. 82,000 crore (forget over-runs) being spent over the next decade and more, with nearly Rs. 53,000 crore targeted to be spent before 2015. The study promises that, with this expenditure, commuter comfort will be assured through an inter-connected urban transport system where every transport authority will not ignore the others but will work amicably with them for the common good. That’s manna for the dreams of commuters, with a promise that they will all be pleasant strongly implied.
Sadly, I tend to be sceptical about many of these studies and the promises they hold. Since I’m addicted to looking back, just let’s look at two short stretches of interconnectivity — or, rather, the lack of them — that I can remember ever since as a child I dreamed of being an engine-driver…and that was long, long ago, though over those decades I’ve heard it said often enough that Central Station and Egmore Station, as well as Beach Station and Royapuram Station, will be connected. Well, I’m still waiting.
Let’s look at the kind of wait I’m talking about. The Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company was formed in 1908 and took over Central Station which had been opened in 1873 by the Madras Railway Company and which had been made the MRC’s main station in 1907. The MRC’s Royapuram railway station had long before been inaugurated as the South’s first railway station in 1856.
Meanwhile, the Trichinopoly-headquartered South India Railway Company was established in 1890 and made Egmore Railway Station its northern terminus in 1908. With both stations opening just a year apart, that was when talk first began of linking Madras Central and Egmore. I’m still waiting for the link, just as I had 65 years ago when I had to travel from Colombo to the old undivided Punjab and back and had to hop stations in Madras!
As for that other link, Beach and Royapuram, it was in 1931 that the South Indian Railway began its Tambaram-Beach electric suburban train services. But how did/does the traveller get to Royapuram (for factories, in points north) which was still active in those days — and promises to be active again?
All these services now belongs the Southern Railway which took them over on April 1, 1951. And Southern Railways has been talking from time to time about all these linkages becoming a reality. They’re still talking. And the traveller is still waiting. Will the Southern Railway now get around to talking to CUMTA and will the travellers’ waiting end in a couple of decades?
*****
Take off with Natarajan 