Commuters in the city have come to depend more on taxi aggregators at night because of very limited bus services and the lack of train services on certain routes.
Except for a few services on the Tambaram-Chennai Beach route, and from the Moore Market complex suburban station to Avadi, commuters bound towards Velachery, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu don’t find much by way of train services beyond 10 p.m.
As for bus transport, the MTC operates very few buses, and then only on select routes linking important bus termini such as Koyambedu, Chennai Central and Tambaram.
P. Arunachalam, a resident of Guduvanchery, said beyond 9.30 p.m. on weekdays and particularly on Sundays, commuters have only three to four train services till midnight to Chengalpattu. And this forces commuters to depend on costly, long haul bus services to reach destinations beyond Tambaram.
On the MRTS section, commuters have been seeking extension of train services from Chennai Beach to Velachery beyond 10.30 p.m. till midnight, like that of the Chennai Beach-Tambaram section, where the services are available till 2 a.m.
But Railway officials, citing poor patronage, have not taken any steps to extend even one such train service. On Sundays, train services are stopped towards Velachery after 10 p.m.
A senior official of the Southern Railway said that on weekends, suburban trains on the Chengalpattu and Velachery section do not have good patronage, with most of the coaches running vacant. On Sundays, the occupancy rate in trains from Chennai Beach to Velachery falls drastically after 9 p.m.
A senior official of MTC said that around 150 buses are operated as Night Time Service, which cost over one-and-half times more than the normal ticket price.