Increase in ticket rates and boarding of passengers from suburbs made by private buses now
Posted on: 13/Jan/2018 12:10:58 PM
People go to their native places during this pongal season is a known fact. Now the news is private bus operators have used this opportunity and have charged three times the rate for the tickets and made lives of many travellers difficult. It must be noted that these private operators have also ordered the people travelling to board their buses from suburban areas like Perungalathur for south bound and from Poonamallee for west bound.
Minister of state transport Mr. MR. Vijayabaskar had earlier warned against overcharging the passengers but the private operators did not bother about this warning.
A resident belonging to Anna Nagar in Chennai, spoke about how it was difficult to go to Perungalathur instead of Koyambedu in order to travel to Madurai. She also spoke about how they got a call at the last minute from the private operators regarding this.
She also threw light on how high amounts were collected for the tickets by the private bus operators because of uncertainty of government buses.
One shocking piece of news is some private bus operators even collected ticket fares up to the end destination even though the passengers wanted to get down midway. It is said that people travelling from Chennai to Villupuram using Madurai bus spent amount of Rs 1200 for the ticket and this is extremely high as normal trip to Villupuram costs just Rs 300. It is said that the private bus operators must charge the same amount from the passengers even during the festival times.
It must be noted that on Friday morning the department belonging to the state transport opened pre-booking counters in areas such as Tambaram, Poonamallee and Koyambedu and many people waited in the queues to get their tickets.
For the sake of people, government has set up temporary bus stands in Anna Nagar, Tambaram, Saidapet, Poonamalee etc and buses would start from these bus stands during this pongal season.
