Some pictures of buses in Chennai

As a transport enthusiast, I keep shooting pictures of buses, trains, trams and metros everywhere. Here's a selection taken with a Nokia 3500c in Chennai.

Chennai traveller infomation: How to buy travel passes for MTC buses
I had recently put together a brief presentation on this subject, and here it is.

Travelling Wise, in Chennai

Information, they say, is power. It is also money. If you have to travel in Chennai without catastrophic expenditure, you must have the best tips on low cost mobility.

One of those is the "Travel As You Please" passes offered by the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, commonly referred to as the MTC.

I have put together a presentation on Google's new online presentation utility, on this. Actually, this kind of travel information should be publicised by the MTC proactively. Because they will not do it (although the National Urban Transport Policy of the UPA Government expects them to do so), I have done my bit.

With some time and effort, it can be expanded and hopefully will help many passengers travel wise. At present, I am only discussing the passes. I will add other aspects in future...

In Chennai, all cars are bumped

You see those nice car ads on television and ultimately decide to take the plunge. You drive off a spanking new, shiny, smooth piece of metal from the automobile dealership, the celebratory tape on the bonnet telling the world that you have decided to make the traffic jam worse by at least one car.

In Chennai, you then realise that your shiny contraption is destined to soon look battered and bruised. Your relatives don't see the point in avoiding driving into the mad whirl of T.Nagar. So you inch along, with autorickshaws that look like noisy garbage cans threatening to test your nerve. Large garbage trucks crowd you out, semi-literate drivers in three-wheeled carriages rush at you...you feel that you and your new car are in a nasty PC game that could be called "Monster Chennai Traffic" or something.

THUMP! Your rear bumber has finally been put to the test. Behind you is either a crazed motorcyclist who wants to drive through you, or an Indicab taxi, or sadly, a very literate stupid middle class moron driving, mostly, a battered piece of junk.

That's what happened to me in my new Alto today. There was this stupid out-of-towner in his white junk-like Maruti 800 (TN 38 F 4955) who just thumped his car into the back of my stationary Alto in front of Chennai's nuclear traffic generator, Saravana Stores, in Panagal Park.

"Sorry," said the culprit. He was so nervous that he quickly sped away.

Luckily, the Alto has been designed for backside hits from middle class morons driving mobile junk. So it showed only a couple of scratches, although the laws of Physics tell me that some of that energy from our moronic friend's Maruti 800 has indeed been transferred to the bolt holding the Alto bumper. It won't hold very well if it is repeatedly targeted by more morons.

But it is not just me in this sort of position.

The next time you are on the road, or better still in a parking lot, look at all the cars and you will find that they all have that bruised look, particularly in the bumpers and on the fenders.

Which is why I believe that many of us should be abandoning the car and taking to the bus and the train. Those who insist on driving should be made to pay extra, so that the money will go towards buying more Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses and suburban and MRTS trains and operating them at sane fares.

Until that happens, we will have only bruised cars, new and old. Don't be fooled by all those girls who feel a little naughty and want to rub some sun tan in an Indica...or by the leather jacketed girl who is overcome by the sexuality of the widebodied Logan. Neither the girls nor those roads exist in real life. On the road with your new car, it is morons that are behind you, ahead of you...all around you.

Metro railway for Chennai

At long last, it appears (just appears) that Chennai is moving ahead with a Metro rail project.

Here is A.Srivathsan's report in The Hindu on it.

If the DMK government is intelligent (which is unlikely in its present avatar) it will built a solid metro for the city and stake its claim to have revolutionised mobility in Chennai. The first step of involving the DMRC is positive, but the future course is hazy at present.

Srivathsan makes the important point that the MRTS in Chennai in a sort of stupor because the State Government sees no stake in it, and a similar attitude to the metro rail, bus and suburban rail options in the future will create another dysfunctional system. So far, the State Government has not shown any interest to go beyond its atrophied bus monopoly, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation.

Sadly, the two dravidian parties and the palsied Congress in Tamil Nadu cannot bring themselves to think beyond the immediate future and the filthy lucre that they can make from deals. The other parties, including those professing green credentials, only give the impression that they are perpetrating an elaborate hoax on the State.

There are others also who think that cheaper cars are not the answer to Chennai's mobility problem, metros and buses are. Here is a blog post that reflects this view.

New platform ticket vending machines at Chennai Central

At the best of times, Chennai Central is a beehive of activity, to some a functional anarchy of teeming thousands who throng a stately building that is familiar to generations. It takes little imagination to realise that the major part of the passenger handling areas of this premier railway terminal were created during colonial rule (just as the British put in more rail tracks to expand their own interests than free India's leaders have been able to, to pursue theirs).

Two new things strike you at Chennai Central.

There are a couple of sleek-looking platform ticket vending machines of foreign manufacture on the portico in the entrance. Neither is functional as yet, and I doubt if they will be around for long. It is of course, debatable whether you need German-built machines when you have many people who can find gainful employment (remember that machines need to be refilled with tickets and change, which requires people, though fewer than to operate separate counters).

Then there is a bright green kiosk on the bus bay outside Chennai Central now. This belongs to that somnolent bureaucracy, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation that runs the city bus service. The objective is to dispense daily, weekly and monthly season tickets. On a weekday afternoon, I came across this kiosk, nicely and cosily shut. I learn that the passes and tickets are only available in the first fortnight of the month. It is a pity that MTC cannot use modern technology and a matching attitude for its operations: Its buses are ramshackle and dangerously old, dirty, unwashed and polluting. Its crews are surly, rude, abusive and unabashedly homophobic. Its bureaucracy is faceless, arrogant even in its obscurity and closed to reform. Above all, it is unredeemingly corrupt.