About 300 roads, including short lanes and streets will be given a facelift so as to ensure last mile connectivity to the metro network under MMI
The recently commissioned Koyambedu-Alandur metro rail network has not only taken you close to seamless connectivity but also brought with it easily commutable roads and streets.
Chennai: Are you one of those city residents living in an area where cabbies refuse to come or charge extra fare citing bad roads or even MTC small buses are hard to find. If yes, just wait a while. The cabbies will come without hesitation and the elusive MTC will play not very far from your doorstep soon, at least in a few parts of the city, precisely, within 5 km radius of the seven metro rail stations.
The recently commissioned Koyambedu-Alandur metro rail network has not only taken you close to seamless connectivity but also brought with it easily commutable roads and streets, thanks to MMI (multi-modal integration), an urban transportation concept the city is pretty new to.
About 300 roads, including short lanes and streets along the 10 km metro rail corridor, will be given a facelift so as to ensure last mile connectivity to the metro network under MMI. The roads (lanes/streets/interior roads) were identified during a consultation of the various agencies involved in MMI, especially Chennai Corporation, which will be executing the road
improvement works.
“Some roads have already been given a fresh coat of tar or whatever is necessary to ease free vehicle movement along the corridor,” said a senior CMRL (Chennai metro rail limited).
Metro has divided the areas around its station into three zones. The 500 metre radius around the station will include two-wheeler and bicycle parking, plaza for people to gather and feeder bus stops. The subsequent layer will cover 1,500 metre radius around the station where intermediate public transport like share autos, autos and cabs will be accessible. Last comes the 5 km radius around stations, where local residents or rather potential metro travellers live.
“The idea is to provide local residents hassle-free connectivity to the stations,” said N.K. Kumar, chief general manager (transportation and planning), CMRL, adding that the 300 roads identified for improvement will fall within the 5 km radius, which will be provided with feeder bus service.
Two bus per 30 routes along metro corridor
“The average distance between the stations on the 10 km corridor is around 1.2 km. So by drawing a 5 km circle, potential travelers in most of the surrounding areas will be covered,” another CMRL officer explained, explaining that the travelers cannot be expected to come 10 km away from the station. CMRL had already identified 30 routes in which MTC currently operates around a dozen and a half small buses.
Metro has put the bus requirement at 2 per route at any given time besides keeping the total operational area of the feeder buses at 6-8 km on the 30 routes.
Though the area earmarked is 5 km radius, the buses will be operating only up to 8 km maximum as travelers beyond that would either be covered by feeder bus connecting to the next station or they would be too far from the 10 km metro corridor under operation now.
Unlike the bus route roads (BRR), which account for only a little over a tenth of the total 3,000 km road length of the city, the interior roads and lanes are narrow and hence small buses, CMRL officers explained.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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