No new buses added to the fleet of MTC buses in Chennai
Posted on: 17/Sep/2018 9:51:43 AM
To improve the public transportation, the union ministry has emphasised the need to increase the number of buses. It is now said that in this aspect, Chennai is going in the opposite direction. As many as 250 old buses have been discarded by the MTC or metropolitan transport corporation as these buses were unfit for operation for the last one year. No new MTC buses have been added to the fleet. Another important point is the number of routes on which the MTC offers services has dropped from 833 in the year 2017 to 708 now in 2018. In the last seven years, the existing fleet of 3439 buses did not have any new addition of buses.
Recently the state of TN grabbed headlines when it purchased as many as 515 new buses and none of the buses were assigned to MTC. Worn out buses belonging to other transport corporations were replaced by new buses. The shocking piece of information is nearly 70 % of MTC buses that are in operation are over-aged. These buses are being operated inspite of covering a distance of 6 to 7 lakh km.
There are many issues present in the MTC buses in Chennai and these are broken seats, jammed or sooty window panels, leaky roofs, damaged footsteps and broken handrails etc. The people of Chennai using the MTC buses have been tolerating these issues. Compared to other government owned transport corporations in India, MTC buses have been responsible for the highest number of accidents. In 2016-17, 12000 accidents involving MTC buses were reported. The good news is in this year the number of accidents has been reduced as the transport corporation had intensified the training for the drivers. As per the commuters, more than 30 lakh passengers use MTC buses every day and little has been done to improve their travel experience.
One regular commuter of MTC bus spoke about how the clamps holding the windows are broken in many buses and due to this windows cannot be kept opened. This creates huge problem in the summer time. He later spoke about how in the past there were many announcements made by the transport minister, Mr. Vijayabhaskar regarding improving the standards of the government buses. These announcements were not put into action.
According to a senior official belonging to MTC, 500 new buses would be added to the existing fleet soon. He highlighted that bus body building works have been taken up by some units in Karur and Chromepet.
