In the city of
Chennai, presently buses are operated by the
Metropolitan Transport Corporation ~ the same Corporation was earlier
known as Pallavan Transport Corporation (PTC).
The transport corporation was established in Jan 1972 with a fleet strength of 1029 buses. The
operational jurisdiction was once restricted to
Chennai Metropolitan area. The Pallavan Transport Corporation was split
into two and a new Corporation, namely, Dr. Ambedkar Transport Corporation Ltd.
started functioning in 1994. In 1997,
more changes saw, Pallavan Transport Corporation being renamed as Metropolitan Transport Corporation
(Chennai Division –1), Ambedkar Transport Corporation renamed as Metropolitan Transport Corporation
(Chennai Division-II). In 2001, amalgamation took place and now it is MTC.
Understand
that as per Transport rules, a bus can accommodate upto to 73 passengers. One needs to see the
operating buses during peak hours in the city of Chennai to understand how
difficult is to count ! There are
Ordinary, Express, Women’s special,
Vestibuled, (double deckers too were existent earlier in select routes); low
floor buses, AC Volvo services, Mini buses all operated by MTC. Earlier we used to see lot of TATA buses,
especially on route 12 – now they are all Leyland !!
Many buses have
digital boards and in keeping with the floating population of Chennai, they
have boards in Tamil and English too.
Besides the buses have Numbers for easy identification. There will always be pundits on road side who
would guide on the buses that ply to your destination. In early days every part of the city and the
emerging suburbs would get connected to Central and to Parrys….the common Q in
those days was identifying the Pallavan bus route Nos…. those days PTC No. 1 used to run between
Triplicane OT and Tondiarpet….. now it runs between Thiruvottiyur and
Thiruvanmiyur and does not pass through Triplicane.
Numbers
could still be confusing. 27 runs from Anna Square to Anna Nagar; 27B from
Annasquare to Koyambedu bus terminus; 27D runs between Villivakkam and
Foreshore Estate. Some have Suffixes to
Numbers; some have prefixes while some have both !!! 21H; T51; M70S. Previously the route
guides in vernacular used to sell like hot cakes – not sure whether they are
still existent in this e-age where everyone tries to make a google search !!
Yesterday, I travelled
in MTC bus from Karapakkam to Tambaram.
I waited for T51 – then came a bus with no. 95; the board read Tambaram
and I hopped in. I saw a A4 printout saying 51 = 95. Could not make out in the first instant and on
the road saw 102 [incidentally 102 ran from Chennai to Vellore – not by PTC
though]
There
was lot of confusion as Metropolitan
Transport Corporation has decided to change the numbers. It is
reported that armed with data gotten
from travel booked through electronic ticketing machines, officials are now
mapping the way the city travels better, allocating buses according to the
demand on each route. It is claimed that
the revenue has gone up. The biggest reason for the rise in revenue,
MTC officials say, is the introduction of 'cutservices,' or shortening of
routes. So far, the frequencies of buses on 12 curtailed routes have been
increased. For example, buses on route 51 (Tambaram-Velachery) used to ply
every 10 minutes. Now, they ply every five minutes on the rechristened '51cut
route' between Velachery and Medavakkam.
Each bus now travels an average distance of 300km against the 310km it
travelled earlier. Another 100 routes are in the pipeline.
But the
change in Numbers coming as it did with little information to travellers has
taken people by surprise. Some missed
their buses not realising that it had a changed number. The Hindu reports that in East Tambaram bus
terminus, however, the change of number was announced through the public
address system; but those enroute were oblivious to change. Some
of the route numbers that gave way to new ones on Tuesday include 21H (102),
T21 (102K), T51S (95C), T51 (95) and C51 (99). According to MTC officials, these changes were
made in accordance with the areas from where the buses originate. For example,
buses from Adyar, Besant Nagar and Thiruvanmiyur were changed to start with
‘9’.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
11th Feb 2015.
