Chennai to get state-of-the art bus shelters

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Bus travel in Chennai is expected to undergo a massive change with state-of-the art bus shelters, standardizing of bus routes and procurement of newly designed buses that are disabled friendly.

Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority has proposed a series of measures to woo more people to use public transport and has set a target to achieve increase the public transport usage to 60 per cent by 2018, according to G Ganesan, Deputy Manager, Metropolitan Transport Corporation (Chennai).

He said the city requires additional 1,600 buses as per day a bus carries 1,700 passengers. Interestingly, CUMTA has also proposed to have bus shelters in all the bus stops. Currently, only 40 per cent bus stops have shelters, said Ganesan.

And these bus stops would have seating arrangement and would be illuminated besides having real time information on buses. Ganesan said that currently 100 bus stops in the city have GPS and plans are on to have GPS in all the bus stop. Interestingly, plans are also on to have SMS based alerts on what time the bus would be arriving at the bus station.

Not only that MTC website is also likely to undergo change. “The website is not user friendly now we are planning introduce user friendly applications,” said Ganesan. Even the MTC helpline could change and plans are that it could even become a four digit one.

Interestingly, there is also a proposal for periodic assessment of fleet age. Currently, a MTC bus has tenure of six years. Interestingly, the fleet procurement policy would also undergo change.

He ruled out thepossiblity of introducing common mobility card for CUMTA but said there is the possibility of introducing MORE cards which can be used in bus, train and taxis.

Meanwhile, the implementation of dedicated bus lanes known as bus rapid transit system in 54 km stretch of the city is yet to get green light from the government. The feasibility report is submitted to the government by Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

The bus lanes which will ensure hassle free travel without any interruption from other vehicles is being proposed at Siruseri-Saidapet (24.8 km), Tambaram-Saidapet (18.5 km) and Chromepet-Thoraipakkam (10.6 km) stretch.