Tambaram to Beach route to get more trains

CHENNAI: The city may get more suburban trains on the Beach-Tambaram-Chengalpet route in three years. Southern Railway will speed up work to eliminate a bottleneck between Egmore and Beach and complete laying a third line between Tambaram and Chengalpet, allowing it to add more trains on the popular suburban route that daily handles around five lakh commuters.
Southern Railway general manager in a virtual press meet said the third Tambaram-Chengalpet line will be ready by March 2021 and work on doubling the Egmore-Beach line will be speeded up. “A detailed project report for doubling Egmore-Beach line will be submitted in November. It will be completed in the least possible time. It will be ready by 2023.”
He said it was a bottleneck. “Once these projects are completed there may be more suburban trains. There is already a suburban line between Tambaram and Chengalpet and the third line will be a capacity addition.”
The two infrastructure projects will help run more trains as a large number of people travel from Chengalpet to Chennai for work and education. There is a good demand for Beach-Chengalpet trains even now and commuter numbers are expected to increase in the coming years as Chengalpet is coming up as a suburban hub for the city. It has been made into a headquarters for a new district which will further fuel this growth, said a railway official. The fast train from Chengalpet to Beach, with limited stops, used to be jam packed in the morning peak hours in the pre-shutdown days.
The doubling work between Egmore and Beach will also help railways to operate more trains connecting the southern line and the western and northern line via Chennai Beach station. More express trains too can be operated from Egmore to the north.
Southern Railway now operates 453 suburban trains.