The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Rain impacts on MTC: services curtailed, revenue down

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 15, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Rain impacts on MTC: services curtailed, revenue down

Sandhya Soman

Management says full fleet is operational now and all services have been resumed

CHENNAI: The northeast monsoon, which nearly brought the city to its knees on several days, has had its impact on the Metropolitan Transport Corporation too. The flooding of roads, especially in the suburbs, forced MTC to withdraw services in several areas and brought down its daily collections.

"We were not operating buses around Minjur. The buses stopped at Sathangadu. Nearly 20 services to Manali, Manali New Town and other areas had to be cut," said a senior official.

In south Chennai, the buses could go only up to Kunrathur, says M. Chandran, general secretary of the Metro Transport Association.

"No buses were going to Somangalam, Alakesa Nagar, Amarambedu and Nandambakkam after the Chembrakkam lake was opened," he said.

The curtailment of services because of the rain had its impact on the Corporation's revenue. The daily collection went down from Rs. 90 lakh to Rs. 80 lakh on several days, according to officials. This is in addition to the cost of maintenance incurred due to increase in breakdown of buses.

"The Corporation has no provision to maintain the buses. Already we have to operate old vehicles that have completed more than eight years," said Mr. Chandran.

The management had instructed employees not to operate services even if there is a half-an-hour delay caused by maintenance work. All these add to the loss in revenue, he adds.

The management, however, maintains that MTC is back in full swing.

"The entire fleet is operational. From Wednesday morning we have resumed services to areas where we had to stop running buses on days it rained heavily," said managing director L.J. Singaravelan.

He added that a dip in the revenue was felt only on days when it rained heavily and that too due to lack of patronage.

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