Saturday, August 28, 2010

United We Stand!

In a very glad move, the Tamil Nadu government is all set to initiate the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) Bill. Finally, it seems, the government has realized that simply building flyovers and widening roads on every congested route is not going to relieve it permanently from the traffic woes. The government's effort of addressing the issue in urban transportation on a larger scale is certainly commendable.
Basically, the prime function of CUMTA will be, but not restricted to, the integration of all the modes of transport- buses, suburban trains & MRTS.
This means that all the transport infrastructure development in the city will be overseen by this agency by developing a Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP) for the same. The bureaucratic delays and lack of coordination between the various agencies like MTC, Southern Railways, Chennai Corporation, Suburban Municipalities etc. which had hindered the implementation of projects in the past would no longer be a problem.
The main objective of the CTP is to promote the public transport sytem in the city, which has consistently been losing its share against private mode. Between 1992 and 2008, the percentage trips made in buses fell from 39% to 26% (source: CMDA). Although, CMDA in it's Second Master Plan, being highly optimistic, has aimed to increase the public-private share to 55-45, the intermittent survey conducted in 2005, showed an underwhelming 28-72 split. To address this issue, CMDA has come up with Bus Rapid Transit Ways(BRTW) project along 7 routes, one of which is the IT corridor. These routes will have a dedicated corridor for buses, and in conjunction with the ITS, the bus transport would be made faster, safer, reliable and comfortable.
The major advantage to the commuters by the integrated mode, is 'single ticket travel'. To illustrate: If a person residing in Medavakkam(suburb in south Chennai) wants to go to, say, Parry Corner (CBD), the most convinient option is to take a bus from Medavakkam to Velachery MRTS station and then take a train to Parry Corner. This is more convenient than to take a direct bus to Parry Corner because the city limits starts from Velachery, and the journey time of bus drastically increases as it moves towards the CBD, while the MRTS is much faster and mostly run under-capacity. With the introduction of single ticketing system, the commuter can do away with the standing in queue at the railway station. With the introduction of BRTW, which are designed to act as a feeder to other modes, the travel would be unperturbed by the traffic congestion, which would will attract significant patronage towards public transport. This is bound to relieve congestion to a considerable extent, cause reduction in road accidents, reduce vehicle emission.
Having said that, the practical implications will only be known after the actual implementation of the system. Hopefully, it turns out to be a success and other Metropolises would follow the suite very soon.

Reference:

PS: I agree that the title was a bit cheesy!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The unification plans seems like a really good idea right now. I do hope it will work your right.. but getting over the "political" issues would be the important thing.. As you said, it is the actual implementation that is going to affect it.. I do seriously hope it works out..

Srinath said...

I've travelled regularly on the MRTS before. Really the problem is that the stations are sitting in some isolated area with poor connectivity with other means of transport.

Also you should see Mandaveli, Greenways Road and a couple of other stations, they aren't even constructed properly.

They make 54.7 cr loss every year. The articles don't mention if takeovers will necessarily help fix that. And after takeover they plan to put more expensive AC cars with automatic doors and stuff.

I think demand will increase only after they manage to connect it to St. Thomas Mount - it appears that the Phase 4 ring has been cancelled so they are stopping with Phase 3.

Btw, I wonder why MRTS don't raise their fares a little bit to improve their earnings?

Srinath said...

PS : They also need to do something about that wasted floor space area which can be a good income generator if it was put for commercial use. Last year they opened up 3 tenders for that -- don't know what happened since then.

I found this on a forum thread. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=625460

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