City Transport Corporation Plies More Buses
A statement from State Transport Minister S S Sivasankar on Tuesday regretted that the Southern Railways did not inform the transport department in advance about its plans for undertaking the renovation work from February 20 that had led to cutting down on suburban train services.
Chennai: Providing succor to commuters affected by the disruption of suburban rail services in Chennai due to the renovation work at the Egmore railway station and railway tracks, the City Transport Corporation had augmented its bus services by operating 60 special buses over and above the 314 coaches in regular service
A statement from State Transport Minister S S Sivasankar on Tuesday regretted that the Southern Railways did not inform the transport department in advance about its plans for undertaking the renovation work from February 20 that had led to cutting down on suburban train services.
The formal announcement was made only on the previous day, February 19, and while the railways said that during peak hours the frequency of suburban services would be reduced from once in five minutes to once in 20 minutes, the reality was that trains were operated once in 30 minutes causing severe hardship to commuters.
Since disruption was expected to go on till April 5, the city transport department had started operating special services on important link routes like Egmore station to Secretariat, Central station, Government General Hospital, High Court and Chennai Beach Station, he said.
However, he said that since many commuters had bought train passes for three month by paying up in advance, there was a general reluctance among them to pay for bus tickets.
