T. Nagar bus depot is highly cramped now
Posted on: 02/Jan/2019 10:28:41 AM
The bus depot in T. Nagar is now making news for wrong reasons. It is worth mentioning here that this depot operates as many as 19,000 trips every day. As many as 72 buses go from this depot to various parts of Chennai city and more than 100 buses come to this depot in T. Nagar from other parts of the city. Over the years, the number of passengers using this depot has increased many times but the size of the facility has remained the same. Many buses belonging to MTC or Metropolitan Transport Corporation enter the facility and these buses pile on the main road due to inadequate space. This is now creating huge issues for many.
The bus depot in T. Nagar is of the size of one acre is known. It is now said that all the buses are accommodated within one-acre space at the bus depot. A student who takes this route expressed his feelings about this bus depot and spoke about how it takes about 20 minutes for the buses to exit the depot. He then explained about the time wastage due to this and spoke about how it takes just 30 minutes from T. Nagar to Koyambedu but another 20 minutes gets wasted at the depot itself.
He finally highlighted that buses packed closely created issues for the commuters as they could not board the buses due to little space available. There were few complaints about the poor condition of this bus depot from the MTC crew members also. As per a driver of MTC, the space crunch leading to the traffic at the depot causes ripple effect. The traffic at Usman Road, Burkit Road and Madley Road gets affected by this. He then revealed that at the night time the buses get parked outside the bus depot due to lack of space and this has resulted in theft of 6 batteries installed in the MTC buses. He also explained that due to space issues the MTC buses bound for places like Ambattur, Mogappair etc get halted on the Burkit Road for picking up the commuters.
The piece of information gathered was this bus depot in T. Nagar attracts atleast one lakh passengers daily and this number gets increased during the festival season as many come to this place for shopping. This was later confirmed by Mr. Chandran, state vice-president of CTU. It must be taken into account that T. Nagar was initially constructed as a residential place but is now regarded as the largest shopping district in India. Mr. Chandran then spoke about the importance of multi-level bus terminus at T. Nagar and said he and others have been asking the government to build this multi-level terminus so that additional space could be created for the buses. He expressed his unhappiness regarding the authorities of the state owned transport corporation and said the authorities have failed to initiate any developmental projects for improving the bus depot located at T. Nagar. This has resulted in issues for the commuters now.
