Keeping pace with the growth of the city, especially in the southern and western areas, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) has started expanding its operations.
The MTC has been branching out particularly in areas where public transport is minimal.
The transport corporation normally operates extension services in select areas beyond the city limits, but over the years it has started operating full-fledged services by constructing bus termini in the localities.
The expansion of operations has happened on a large scale on various routes towards Porur, Tambaram, Thiruvanmiyur and Velachery.
All these services being operated from the expanded areas are receiving a good number of passengers as they have few alternative public transport facilities.
A senior official of the MTC said that previously bus services were stopped in Porur, but over the years services were extended to Iyyappanthangal and now to Poonamallee. Similar is the case in areas beyond Ambattur, Velachery and Tambaram. All these extended areas have also become hubs for operating various bus services.
An MTC official said Porur, which was once an important junction, had lost the race to Poonamallee, as the latter bus terminus had become an important nerve centre for connecting several localities.
The Avadi terminus becoming a transport hub is another example where the MTC previously had Ambattur Industrial Estate as the connecting hub for north and south routes, but now made Avadi as a transport hub for having multi-modal transport facility.
S. Gunasekaran, a resident of Avadi working in Tambaram, said previously they had to take two or three buses to reach the destination as the Ambattur Industrial Estate was used as the link point. But now direct buses are available from Avadi.
The Ambattur OT was the boundary for bus operations but the increasing residential population towards Avadi has forced the MTC to operate more direct buses from the Avadi terminus.
Tambaram had remained the operating base for MTC but the exploding population in the area and the huge amount of passenger traffic forced the MTC to segregate bus operations into Tambaram East and Tambaram West.
Also, the MTC has extended bus services beyond Tambaram to cover many suburbs such as Perungalathur, Guduvanchery and Vandalur.
In fact, the MTC is operating buses from Tambaram to Chengalpattu along with long distance buses.
New routes
A senior official of the MTC said all these extended areas have become transport hubs, with several new routes being operated and also witnessing good passenger population from these hubs.
From Poonamallee, the MTC operates 25 services on 10 different routes, including the popular bus route 66 operated from Poonamallee to Tambaram.
At the Poonamallee bus terminus, there is an average of one lakh commuter footfall.
The Avadi terminus, which gets more than 50,000 commuters daily, operates 42 services on 14 different routes. The Red Hills terminus from where MTC operates on 16 routes has 35 services with more than 60,000 passengers using the facility daily.