One-track mind ruled by emotion
May 8th, 2008 Roshan Posted in Madras |
Today I travelled by both the suburban Beach-Tambaram line and the MRTS and it suddenly struck me how beautifully connected almost all of this city is. You can get public transport from almost any place to another with a maximum of one change by bus, and if you want to skip all the traffic to the most busy places you can take either the elevated rail or the suburban lines. Gentlemen, Madras has come together surprisingly well. Not as well as it could’ve been, but reasonably good.
A few months ago, I read an article in the EPW about bus rapid transit as an alternative to metro rail and the arguments were very convincing. But you’re all lucky that I’m not the guy running Chennai’s government because I’m a train fanboy. No matter how efficient you make your bus system I’m still going to bulldoze your buildings, canals and flyovers because I want freaking trains. You know why? Because they’re marvels of engineering, Heaven’s chariots, designed not simply to transport but to inspire awe in everyone fortunate enough to witness them. Only an automaton would not feel an immodest and irrational pride when watching the Southern Railway diesel trains thundering through the rail station, green flags waving them onward to do battle with the demons of tardiness.
That, naturally, doesn’t apply to the poor EMUs though, gimped cousins of those fearsome metal steeds, to compensate for whom we have the massive almost-terrifying concrete edifices that are the MRTS stations - Brobdingnagian pillars holding aloft colossal half built walkways, silent catacombs that pass for subways, pathways leading into blank walls. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan once wrote in The Hindu criticising this Brutalist style but the only thing I can agree with him on is that the tiny EMUs are no fair match for the huge stations that they stop at. The stations themselves are frankly awesome, no flimsy prettiness here. Efficiency be damned, the extra crores are well worth it.
My experience with both systems has been near perfect. I’ve travelled the suburban rail nearly every day of my college life the past three years and it has been a few minutes late very rarely. My only gripe with the Beach-Tambaram line is with those godforsaken Pallavaram-return trains that stop at Pallavaram and then come back after giving you some hope in reaching class on time. I’ve only travelled by the MRTS once, and that one time the train was right on time, arriving just as the time ticked to 9:51. As a bonus, the view along the Beach is superb.
Give me my buses for normal transport, sirs, but when I want to be inspired - show me my trains.
EDIT: On re-reading this a while later, it looks like I suffered from Attack of the Adjectives. Never mind :P
May 8th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Provided you get a bus, and a seat on the bus and a seat on the train. If you prefer to travel hanging out of various modes of transport, then yeah, we have a great public transport system.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
@Roshan : I’m still going to bulldoze your buildings, canals and flyovers because I want freaking trains.
Cool dude…….
May 8th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Oh buses aren’t a problem, there are so many of them. I get the feeling there are fewer of them than before, but they’re sufficient. And you can’t expect to get a seat in a bus all the time, nor in the train. Dude, have you seen the London Underground or photos of the Japanese metro?
Sivakumar: I mean it.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The beach MRTS is brilliant. I travelled in one, in the late afternoon just after 3. There was not much of a crowd at that time. In fact, no one. It was really weird travelling alone in the compartment.
Anyone new to the city won’t appreciate the transport system, especially bus transport. You don’t know whether a bus is going toward a destination or away from it. And bus conductors are busy getting pissed at people with no change.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
That’s funny, this 10 o’clock one I took was also relatively empty. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s ever packed.
Really? All buses, you just have to read the plate on the left (driver’s side) to know where they’re going and right to know where they’re coming from.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
“it suddenly struck me how beautifully connected almost all of this city is”
We bloody discussed it last night!!!!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
No wonder it struck me. For a second there I thought I had an original moment. Ah well…
May 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Buses are slow too and cant really keep up with the metro trains, even if you have a super bike, arrrrr traffic.
Just think it takes me 6 or 7 mins for me to reach Nunambakam from saidapet by electric train. But it will take nearly 30 mins or more(depends on the traffic near panagal park) if i travel in a bike or bus.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Well I agree traveling by train is better especially from Tambaram to Guindy(The road is just too polluted). Unless you get those AC buses of course.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:51 am
@Roshan : I accept your view yaar……
@Arun : And bus conductors are busy getting pissed at people with no change. Ya u r correct….. I lost so many 50 paises because of this….
May 9th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
@ George
I didn’t know that one. I will confirm that when I’m stranded somewhere.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:53 am
MRTS is awesome, simply because I have three stations within a 3 km radius from my house. :) I can walk to the nearest station from my place.
I have been on it only a couple of times. It’s really amazing how quick they are. You don’t need seats on trains because the time of travel is pretty short and there are no annoying sudden breaks to negotiate.
When MTC (PTC ?) started introducing deluxe buses, I was pretty excited. Because even if it did take time, I expected the fare to keep away people so that I could get seats. But then MTC idiots have reduced the other normal buses which has translated to overcrowded deluxe buses. I hate that.
Also, none of the deluxe buses stop in front of my college. (Not bothered any longer. But there are no trains on OMR either)
May 10th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
@Gowtham: Very true, but if we had dedicated bus corridors, the difference would be reduced. And when you no longer want a route, you just turn that dedicated bus road into a normal road. No space waste, see.
@Adithya: That road was good before they started that flyover business. Once it’s done maybe it’ll be good again.
@Sivakumar: Ha ha, I like that. Fortunately, I manage to get change most of the time.
@Arun: Try it, but don’t blame me if you end up in the wrong place.
@Karthik: I just realised how close the Kasturbai Nagar and Kotturpuram stops are. Why the Kotturpuram stop?
That deluxe bus business is a fraud engineered to raise bus fares. Soon the only buses left will be deluxe buses.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I stay in Thiruvanmiyur. I am closest to the one opposite Tidel Park. But then, the bus depot is even closer. :)
May 11th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Everything seems to work just fine once the whole thing’s been built, and the trains are all ready to use. But the whole trouble is during the time of construction, I think, as now in Bangalore with the Metro rail coming up. Bangalore traffic is bad enough without the construction of a large-scale rail transit system adding to its woes.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Ah, but delayed gratification, you know. Fortunately, where I live there wasn’t much disruption during construction because they built the rail over the canals in Adyar, so no roads had to be blocked and there was loads of space for them to dump their debris. The canals are filled up mostly now.
Nice, Karthik. You connected bugger.