Chennai Metro to run at lesser frequency

CMRL (Chennai metro rail limited), which revised the timetable and reduced the frequency to 15 minutes early this week, in all probability, will maintain the reduced frequency till March 2016. Officials, who attributed the reduced frequency to lack of patronage and described it as a temporary arrangement made on "trial and error" method, said the frequency would be increased once the patronage increases.

"The train runs only on the 10-km corridor. Patronage will increase once it is connected to St Thomas Mount, Little Mount and the Airport and the entire 20-km elevated corridor becomes operational," a senior CMRL officer said, revealing that they have planned to commission the entire 20-km corridor by March 2016.

"We have planned to call the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) for inspection in the first week of March 2016. Once it gets cleared, we will operate trains by the end of that month," said a highly placed CMRL officer, adding that the frequency will be increased to a train every seven minutes on the elevated corridor.

When Little Mount, St Thomas Mount and the Airport are linked to Koyambedu corridor, the patronage will increase. Traffic would increase further when Egmore is connected with Koyambedu via Shenoy Nagar and Kilpauk, which, CMRL has already planned to make operational in another nine months.