Chennai city has got just one new government bus now
Posted on: 11/Oct/2018 9:45:16 AM
In this year 2018, nearly 1000 buses were launched in the state of Tamil Nadu and it grabbed the attention of many. On Wednesday as many as 471 buses got launched is known. The news that has come out now is Chennai city has got just one bus and western districts have got largest number of buses. It is revealed that more than 30% of buses were added to the transport corporations belonging to Coimbatore and Salem. The Chennai city’s wait for the new government buses to replace the old damaged buses is still continuing now. There were many requests from the public and MTC to replace old and damaged buses with the new buses. This decision not to allocate adequate buses to Chennai city inspite of the repeated requests has caused huge disappointment now.
The official data has confirmed that every day 30 lakh passengers that is one-third of population of Chennai use MTC buses to reach their destination. This accounts for 20 percent of the total 1.8crore passengers who use government buses in TN. It was shocking when in the month of July in 2018 none of the 515 new buses built for 8 transport corporations of TN were added to the MTC fleet. It must not be forgotten that the transport minister, Mr. M.R. Vijayabhaskar promised new buses for MTC when the next batch gets ready.
Chief Minister of TN, Mr. E. Palaniswamy became cynosure of many eyes on Wednesday, 10th October 2018 when he flagged 471 new buses and that included few buses with bio-toilet facility also. MTC got just one new bus now despite the corporation’s proposal to replace atleast 245 buses on urgent basis. It is brought out that the single new bus would be operated between Kelambakkam and Broadway.
In the last 12 months as many as 250 old MTC buses were declared unfit for operation and these buses were condemned. Not only that more than 70 % of 3300 buses were operated beyond the permissible 6 lakh kilometres. This was as per the data. Managing director of MTC, Mr. Anbu Abraham revealed that as many as 50 buses earmarked for MTC were getting ready and these buses would be operated soon. He later threw light on the reason for the delay for launching of these new buses earmarked for MTC. He stated that the new buses were built as per the new bus body code (AS 52) that required only quality material to be used for construction.
