Kickstarting the Chennai bus route mapping project

This is one thing thats been a long time coming and much needed for Chennai. The MTC may be good at increasing their fleet, but they dont seem to know 3 paisa about giving its users usable information or even trying to do so.

You cant always use a bus to make your trip, and knowing weather you can or not is what helps you decide. In the current scenario, not only is there no information about where the bus stops are located, but no one even knows what buses will stop there or what route the bus will take. Even today, the most reliable  guide is the conductor of your bus and nobody else.  Even after three years of religiously using the buses, i have to confirm if the bus goes to my destination with people on the bus before boarding.

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Chennai Rail Map – Updated

I’m bored of twiddling my thumbs.

The Chennai metro project seems to be making some progress. Why, they even have a half baked website up and running. Even more interesting is the presence of a logo, and it looks suspicously like the work of a dropout student from Andal Alagar Institute of Contemporary Design.

The only thing useful in the site is the Project Brief Document (Download PDF), which has a good amount of interesting information and is worth a read. The rest of the site is plain shite, right from the poorly edited image of a Deutsche Bahn train to the 2 photos of MuKa Stalin staring into the ceiling all the way in Tokyo.

Atleast with the release of official data, i could finally finish my chennai rail map, which should be quite useful, especially since their version resembles like cat puke.

The Chennai Metro Rail – Its finally coming

Chennai will soon get a real metro, and it hopefully wont go the mrts way

As of this afternoon, its official – Chennai has got approval for its own Metro Railway on the lines of that in New Delhi. Personally, its been a long wait for this news. Chennai was the only city that took so long to finalise its plans for the metro, with Mumbai and Hyderabad in advanced stages of planning, and Bangolore already started with the construction.

The project is estimated to cost around 10,000 crores which is similiar to the cost incurred by Delhi metro for its first phase (65km) , against 45km proposed for Chennai. I suspect that the higher cost is due to the longer underground sections here, as the road widths make it difficult to construct elevated lines on the median like what was done in Delhi.

Chennai volvo routes and timings

Had the opportunity to meet with a senior MTC official recently and was able to extract some more details about the newly introduced ac volvo buses.

So far the MTC has acquired 10 buses deployed on 6 routes:
A1 (1) Central – Thiruvanmiyur (via Mylapore)
E18 (2) High Court – Guduvanchery (GST Road)
19G (1) Broadway – Kovalam (ECR)
21G (2) Broadway – Tambaram (GST Road)
A51 (2) Broadway – Tambaram (via Velachery)
D70 (2) Ambattur – Velachery (IRR)

Things looking up for the city? slightly

With a garbage crisis looming over the city after Neeel Metal Fanalca’s poor performance since taking over garbage clearance from Onyx, and choked roads almost everywhere due to never ending construction projects like flyovers and the MRTS, the people of Chennai deserve some good news.

I noticed quite a few positive announcements in the city the past few days:

Riding the Chennai Volvo

 

After an episode of having some deadly beach sundal at the marina beach followed by a session of pav bhaji, onion rava and some filter coffee at hot chips in broadway, i felt like treating myself to a little luxury on the way back home. The new air-conditioned volvo buses launched by the mtc in chennai was attracting a lot of public interest within 2 days of their inception and as a die hard public transport traveller, was keen to try it out.

Chennai all set to get its second airport

While news like these always pops up the question of ‘when’, if and when it does happen, it will mark a new era of development of the city. According to a report on livemint, the union government has approved the 4000 acre site in Sriperumbudur, which the state government had recommended a few months back.In addition to this, the present airport is also to be upgraded at a cost of 2000 crores.