Travelling to Madurai? You’ve little choice if you want catch a train

City-based Intellectual Property Rights expert S Ravi remembers a time when his train travel to Madurai, where he has a property, used to be hassle free.

“There were two express trains and two or three passenger trains. We even had an intercity chair car train,” he recalls. “We could travel as per our requirements taking one of the three daytime trains or evening and night trains,” he added.

But all trains to Madurai, which used to take the Podanur-Pollachi-Palani-Dindigul route, were stopped when gauge conversion work between Podanur and Madurai began in 2009.

Thousands of passengers from Coimbatore who used to regularly commute to Madurai for work, had hoped all the suspended train services would be reinstated in 2017 when gauge conversion of the last stretch between Podanur and Pollachi was completed.

However, two years after the conversion was completed, trains to Madurai from the city are yet to be reinstated. There are only two trains from Coimbatore to Madurai - the Coimbatore-TN Link Express and the Nagercoil Express – both of which leave at 7.20 pm. Besides, on Tuesdays, there is the Coimbatore-Rameshwaram train and on Fridays a Dadar Ten Express is operated.

Consumer and railway activists say they have already submitted petitions to the railway ministry and officials of the Salem division to reinstate the trains to Madurai. “We used to have a train at 7.15 am, 10.40 am, 1.30 pm, 4.20 pm and 10.45 pm, making travel convenient,” said activist C M Jayaraman of Citizen’s Voice Club. “The 7.20 pm trains reach Madurai at midnight, which makes it difficult for passengers. “We explained all these and demanded that the old trains to Madurai be reinstated in 2018 itself.”

Activists say many commuters are forced to take buses instead, which are more tiring and expensive. “While an open train ticket can be bought for around Rs 50, the minimum fare on a government bus to Madurai is Rs 155. Point-to-point buses charge Rs 170 and omnibuses charge Rs 500 to Rs 700,” said Jayaraman.

Commuters and activists say it is a mystery why the railways is hesitating to restore the trains to Madurai. Former head of the rail users forum in Coimbatore and MP P R Natarajan said the intention of spending crores of rupees on gauge conversion was to make train travel hassle-free. “But it is mysterious why the railways is not resuming even the services which used to be operated to Madurai,’’ he said.