In Chennai, buses in high demand for this Pongal season
Posted on: 11/Jan/2020 9:40:06 AM
The important festival of TN ‘Pongal’ is round the corner!!
It is common to see many people going to their native places during Pongal season to be with their families, relatives etc. On Friday evening, people from Chennai began their travel to southern and western districts for Pongal.
Government special buses and trains were full of people yesterday as nearly 1 lakh people left Chennai. In the coming 3 to 4 days, atleast 20% of Chennai population would move to the native places for the Pongal season.
Normally, 4000 bookings were done every day and on Friday booking for special buses increased by a staggering 350 percent. It is important to mention that on Friday close to 18,000 seats were booked in advance. From CMBT, Koyambedu, 10,200 people boarded buses to their natives.
The state transport department had made special arrangements but a larger-than-anticipated crowd thronged the bus stand. This led to heavy traffic congestion outside the bus stand. It is known that the flyover work has been pending here and this combined with the heavy traffic congestion worsened the situation.
A resident belonging to Madipakkam expressed his unhappiness regarding the heavy traffic congestion. He spoke about how he had reached Arumbakkam in 30 minutes but from Arumbakkam to CMBT for a distance of 1 km, the same time was taken. He added that many vehicles started driving on the wrong side near the traffic signal forcing others to wait for longer than usual. Commuters going to places like Tirunelveli and Nagercoil had to wait for a longer time for their buses.
The frequency of buses to these faraway places was not high and the online booking rate was also high for these buses. In these buses, only rear seats and seats near to driver cabins were available for the commuters.
Egmore and Central railway stations were overcrowded and unreserved compartments were packed in all the trains. As a result of this, passengers boarding trains at Tambaram had a difficult time as many had to stand near footboards all night to their places of destination. Taking this situation to their advantage, many private bus operators charged three times the normal ticket rates.
