When will integration be thought of first?

(By A Special Correspondent)

The second phase of rollout of the Chennai’s metro rail service happened recently, sans the fanfare that accompanied the first. The stretch just opened is from Little Mount to the Airport and, with this, commuters can make the 15 km journey from Koyambedu to the Airport is under half an hour. Well, almost. The fact that what ought to have been a single journey at present involves a changeover irks passengers. But they still agree that is a better option than any other.

The scheme as rolled out now involves passengers switching trains at Alandur for both directions – to Koyambedu and to the Airport.

This, if you are laden with baggage as you are bound to be in case you are bound for an airport or a bus station, makes things difficult. In addition, the fare – Rs 50 for a single journey – makes Chennai’s metro the most expensive in the country. If you add the issues of last mile connectivity to this, the city may have a problem rather than a solution on its hands.

The cost of the metro service is largely dictated by several commercial factors. The first of these pertain to the way the finances of the project have been structured. Madras Musings has already written in detail on how the present regime in the State has raised questions on the way the Centre’s interests have taken priority over those of Tamil Nadu in the execution of the Metro. The agreement makes land acquisition and payment of finance costs expensive, and these have an impact on the fares.

The next issue pertains to commercial exploitation of the real estate in the Metro stations. The State Government has pinned its hopes on this to bring down costs. However, the project has not made much headway on this, chiefly because retailers are wary of maintenance at the stations. The experience with the Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS) has proven that their apprehensions may be well founded. In the latter scheme we have had vast barns of stations with the most abysmal maintenance that no normal commuter would like to linger in. With the MRTS too, it was originally planned that the stations would become retail hubs. Not one has succeeded. Internationally too, unlike railway termini, underground stations have had limited success as retail locations.

The issue of fares apart, a bigger problem appears to be that of connectivity. In an era where intermodal forms of transport are being planned everywhere, with bus, train, tram, underground and other services melding to bring about seamless travel systems, Chennai’s services are stuck in some dark age. We thus have a suburban train service that goes around the periphery, a bus service that handles much of the city, the MRTS that runs along the seacoast and now the Metro. It is interesting that none of these really connect with each other. There has been talk for quite a while now that the MRTS and the Metro will be merged together eventually but as to when that will happen nobody appears to know. Other forms of transport such as buses and taxis do not connect to the MRTS stations at all at present and from way the Metro lines are planned, it appears that the same problems will persist in the latter as well.

It is high time that transport is perceived as an integrated service by those in power. Projects such as the Metro are not put up merely to notch up as yet another political achievement but to mitigate the problem of traffic congestion. Unless that wisdom dawns we are unlike to find an answer.

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