Straphanger Updates on Chennai transit coming back, in a big way!

I realise that this blog has not been updated in a while. That’s partly because of attention devoted to the Lok Sabha elections and some other preoccupations. There is every reason to start writing aggressively on public transport and straphanger concerns, because of the non-performance of both the UPA at the Centre and the DMK Government in Tamil Nadu in this area. The Karunanidhi government has shamelessly been talking about the new Metro for Chennai being completed in six years, when the city’s existing rail lines and bus service are in tatters. More on that soon.

Digital information boards: MTC move for GPS is dumb

This picture of a digital information board at the P.Orr and Sons stop on Chennai’s Anna Salai indicates that the Metropolitan Transport Corporation is preparing to try out its GPS-equipped buses.

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The Information Board put up by MTC at P.Orr and Sons bus stop, on Chennai's Anna Salai

To us, this is a false display of modernisation by MTC, a notorious laggard in terms of provision of good quality bus service in Tamil Nadu’s capital. For one, there has been no significant augmentation of buses. This is the primary requisite for the city, and not such meaningless boards. It is futile to put up these boards at some isolated bus stops, because what the people need is frequency of service. This is a city of 6 million people, and if a modal shift from car to bus/rail has to be achieved, the place to start is the actual expansion of services.

Another long-pending need is off-bus fare collection. We have said several times, and the DMK government has pretended not to notice, that the collection of fares on board is difficult for a number of reasons.

The answer is to make available travel cards/passes off-bus widely. People are willing to buy it, but the MTC has been unable to convince its trade unions that this is the way to go. Even if they add five rupees to a travel card to compensate for loss of the “bag incentive” (a percentage of on-bus collection given to the crew as an incentive to stop at the bus stops and not speed away), the public would not grudge it.

But the MTC management has been wooden, obdurate, and some would say indifferent.

So we say to the MTC : Don’t put the cart before the horse. Put in the buses first, at least 5,000 of them on Chennai roads before resorting to gimmicks like the GPS systems and pointless information boards at isolated bus stops. Provide employment by augmenting the services and also achieve a modal shift from car and two-wheeler to bus. Make the buses less-crowded and comfortable. Act sensibly.

As travellers, we need to compel Mr. Karunanidhi’s government and the MTC to do this. On pain of losing votes and thus being rendered irrelevant.

MTC and corruption: Why the sudden concern?

The daily newspapers and other media in Tamil Nadu recently carried the sensational report that the Managing Director of Chennai’s monopoly bus operator, Metropolitan Transport Corporation was found by police to possess a large amount of cash that he could not account for.

Going around with a large amount in cash is nothing new in “Kazhagam” land. One MLA belonging to the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from Mylapore was killed in a car crash several years ago in a neighbouring town, and a few million rupees were strewn around the accident site (the money had been stuffed into a suitcase for election expenditure). The police, quite unusually, returned the money intact. Perhaps such exemplary behaviour was encouraged by the fact that the cash had come from the top rungs of the party.

But the sluice gates of corruption have always been wide open in Dravidian land (by which I refer to the regimes of the two major Kazhagams).

So why did Mr. Ramasubramaniam, the low-profile MD of a bus company become the quarry for the anti-corruption police? That will remain a moot question.

The media has not found the question worth pursuing, and has stuck to a pale press statement issued by the Government. No one wants to be on the wrong side of politicians.

It is helpful to remember that although the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam swears by nationalised transport (with which I have no quarrel), it has in parallel resorted to backdoor privatisation. The MTC buses now have bodies built in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu by private builders, with crude doors and a plasticky trim.

More recently, the transport monopoly also decided to go in for some strange modernisation – putting in GPS systems in buses which don’t have working speedometers or even brake lights. Further public-private partnership projects were outlined ( a euphemism for private sector entry) in the form of 500 modernised bus shelters with cash vending machines, a public telephone and so on.

Quite obviously, the gravy has been flowing thick and steady in the corridors of the MTC for a long time now.  Vigilance action against a particular decision-maker usually follows (especially in a third world country like India) the failure to “share” the kickback as promised.

Typically, contractors pass on bribes in Dravidianland as elsewhere, under the head of “birthday” expenses or “gift” for some wedding coming up. In this case, the money seized only from the official’s car and office totalled Rs. 619,000. The police decided to spare the gentleman of “ignominy” by avoiding a raid on his house, as there was an upcoming wedding (never mind that the same police released a statement to all newspapers about finding unaccounted cash, virtually taking the official’s pants off!).  Anyway, that’s perhaps part of Dravidian self-respect protocols!

The point of it all is that there has always been something very rotten at MTC. The Unions have gone along with it, although they knew what was going on. The mandarins in Fort St.George knew it, and tacitly sanctioned it.

The people who were paying usurious fares for deluxe and Volvo services are those who have been cheated. Inferior buses have been put on the road, true modernisation of the MTC has been resisted, and there is no commuter representation in decision-making.

This shameful state of affairs must change. The MTC administration should be removed from its concrete hideouts and put under the spotlight, with an external audit to determine who was behind the rampant corruption in the purchase of spares, the diversion of funds and the kickbacks.

Such a strong audit is vital because tax funds have been forked out by the millions  by Manmohan Singh’s UPA government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to Tamil Nadu, partly for bus services. This money belongs to us, and we demand to know how it was used.

It is outrageous that when commuters have had their pockets cleaned out by MTC checking inspectors who overload buses all the time, the officials have been siphoning out money for mandarins and political masters.

Does MTC care about its Volvo buses ?

Apparently, Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corporation has decided that its overpriced, underutilised fleet of Volvo buses can be allowed to rust away, so that the tax-payer can be billed for the next set of “super luxury” buses.

Take a look at this one, operating on Anna Salai (Mount Road).

Quite obviously, it is quickly descending into a rusty pit. What a shame!

MTC's minuscule Volvo fleet is rapidly sliding into neglect and disrepair

More trauma from MTC checking staff

This blog has been arguing for quite sometime that the archaic fare collection methods of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation need to be changed in line with the National Urban Transport Policy objectives.

In the absence of such modernisation, a boorish, ill-tempered, rude and unprofessional employee culture at the MTC continues to act against the cause of public transport.

The latest instance of this was witnessed at P.Orr and Sons bus stop on Anna Salai (Mount Road) on Feb 27. An out-of-town couple was “caught” travelling without tickets and asked to cough up Rs.200 as fine by the overzealous checking inspectors. Never mind that all the buses passing through at that time of evening were overloaded way over the transport permits.

The MTC does not acknowledge that buying tickets on board is inefficient. It performed an eye-wash some years ago by deploying stand conductors, but quietly gave in to the pressure of its on-the-bus crew, who get a cash incentive on the bag collections each day. I understand that in the case of services with higher fares, the incentive percentage gets reduced.

Back to the problem of the couple, it was really distressing as they tried to preserve whatever dignity they could, when the checking crew made them look like pocket-pickers caught in the act, and many onlookers were gazing. Without demur, they handed over the money that was demanded. Some members of the public were visibly angry with the MTC staff, who are not known for either their sense of fair-play or for genuine concern for rules that govern MTC operations.

It is a shame that the city of Chennai has such crude and unreasonable public transport systems, where buses are overcrowded, and ticket checkers deliberately wait at a bus stop that is a stage, knowing fully well that there would be a few passengers who are unable to purchase a ticket.

The MTC and the mandarins running public transport from Fort St. George owe it to the tax-payers to reform themselves, and provide a genuinely people-friendly bus system. The political rulers should also realise that there is no point waving for pictures, when they preside over such a decrepit system.

Here are the pictures of the couple, part of an album, that hopefully will catch the eye of the rulers whom people such as these have elected.

MTC CHECKING CREW FLEECES TOURIST

A transport manifesto for Chennai

A slideshow story of a couple of passengers on an MTC bus getting acquainted with the corporation’s “checking squad” has drawn an unusual reaction from a reader.
He has objected to the depiction of Chennai in such bad light, and asked that the picture-story be either removed or made “private” (not visible on the web).
This blog will do neither.
I believe the series of pictures taken at Anna Salai’s P.Orr and Sons stop, of a blind man and a tourist being surprised by a posse of checking staff and asked to cough up Rs.100 fine is a telling representation of all that is wrong with Chennai transport and the Metropolitan Transport Corporation.
I would again draw attention to the persistent demand that the MTC should be more interested in collecting fares, and not making bus travel an ordeal.
Now that the Lok Sabha elections are approaching, if you are indeed concerned about the state of Chennai’s bus transport, do make the following demand to all political parties, starting with the UPA Government chief constituents, the DMK-Congress alliance, that made tall promises of a revolution using the National Urban Transport Policy, but failed to deliver.
We demand:

• That the Unified Transport Authority in Chennai begin work immediately to bring rail, bus and feeder transport under its umbrella.
• That MTC make available a continuously running series of pre-paid tickets, of the daily, weekly and monthly types.
• The tickets should be available widely, daily tickets on board the bus, and all of them certainly at the MTC depots and major time-keepers EVERYDAY, without time restrictions.
• MTC improve its services by augmenting the fleet in keeping with the promises made to Chennai commuters by the DMK Government repeatedly.
• At present, the augmentation of the fleet has gone down sharply.

Beware of MTC checking crews on Chennai buses!

On Monday evening, Jan 5, I was witness to a hapless duo — a blind man and his friend, a tourist in Chennai, being offloaded from a bus and fined for ticketless travel.

I have no problem about ticketless travellers being hauled up if they were given the opportunity to buy one, but they failed to do so.
In this case, the blind man had no idea about the bus that he and his companion had got into, and the tourist was at a loss because he had boarded the bus going in the wrong direction.

The MTC crew is required in such instances to use its discretion, but in this case, the inspectors dipped into the tourist’s pocket and removed a hundred rupee note. They issued a small ticket that stated “100 rupees”.

The scandalous thing about this enforcement episode is that right behind this posse of transport enforcers, many buses were overflowing with crowds, well beyond the legally permitted limit.

Obviously, the law applies only to passengers and not the omnipotent MTC. Chennai’s monopoly bus operator that is not under any kind of regulation and blatantly flouts the UPA government’s National Urban Transport Policy by refusing to implement ticketing reform.

The MTC does not advertise its travel passes meant for daily, weekly and monthly travel. These passes are not made widely available even during the first fortnight of the month, the only time they are sold, during restricted hours. The number of passes is also limited consciously, to avoid displeasing the bus crews, who get a percentage of bag collection every shift as “incentive” (who needs encouragement in a market with deficient supply?). What is more, MTC conductors will not stir out of their seats even in an empty bus.

Despite the traumatic journeys, foul-mouthed crew and undersupply of transport, millions of passengers in Chennai are mute and defenceless; they are let down by the high-sounding Manmohan Singh and Karunanidhi governments (also the earlier pro-privatisation Jayalalithaa regime, for that matter).

If you feel strongly about this, do write to the Union Ministry of Urban Development asking them to stop sanctioning urbanisation funds for Tamil Nadu until this situation is changed. Also write to the Transport Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu, Fort St. George, Chennai and the Managing Director of MTC at www.mtcbus.org

This small story is told in this slideshow.

MTC CHECKING CREW FLEECES TOURIST

So if you are ever in Chennai and take a bus, beware!

Traveller Info: Arriving in Bangalore from Chennai

Try getting into Bangalore from Chennai by bus after 9 p.m. and you may be fleeced in the course of your local travel.
I got in recently from Hosur at 9.15 p.m. and got off at Silk Board point, to travel to Banaswadi Ring Road. The autorickshaw drivers wanted Rs.350 to Rs.400. This is more about twice the fare I had paid by bus to reach Bangalore.
Many other travellers were in a similar plight, and we decided to move to the perpendicular road under the nearby flyover, which has a bus stop with services towards Krishnaraja Puram and tin factory.
A word of caution here. There are scores of call centre transport vehicles that take passengers from this stop towards tin factory at this time of night. I understand that some of them are operated with the sole purpose of money-snatching. The drivers often keep some of their people in the vehicle, and threaten the passenger at knife-point to hand over cash and valuables. So it is better to keep off these vehicles.
KSRTC, the government bus operator has a deluxe service from this bus stop to tin factory at about 10.30 p.m. at an 18-rupee fare. This is a good option, because it takes one to a more connected point, and where autorickshaws are more reasonable.
The KSRTC should actually operate services between the Silk Board-Madiwala bus stops and key locations of the city, say, at half hour intervals, from 9 p.m. to midnight. These could be deluxe services for which passengers are willing to pay.

Nine children die horribly in Kannur, but we will move on

The death of nine primary school children of Perumannu at Iritty-Taliparamba State Highway near Kannur, in a socially progressive, highly literate and rights-conscious state like Kerala is unlikely to stir civil society in this country to the other terror — the war on our roads.

We mourn the death of these defenceless children, who perished even before they could understand the meaning of life and death.

In their graves, these children will eternally mock the vision of progress that we have, and we must bear the supreme shame that we have created a society that worships material objects and does not care for its children.

Of what use the rising GDP when it bears down on our hapless children, on women, old people and the disabled like a steamroller, ever ready to destroy?

Monsoon 2008: Excess rains paralyse life for Chennai residents

Shocked over what has happened in Mumbai isolated in their houses due to rising flood waters, residents in most parts of Chennai found it difficult to go about their daily activities. But the Neros of the land fiddled. They staged not active rescues of people trapped in marooned regions, but public reunions after equally public squabbles.

While Mumbai was the natural major story, newspapers were keen to pursue these non-events locally, rather than call the leaders to account. There were some attempts at reporting the rain damage, but they were, ironically, dry and weak.

The Chennai Corporation administration appeared to be rotting at a pace that matched the soggy garbage that lay in the dumps; four patients died at the government-run Institute of Mental Health, Ayanavaram, after they drank the only stagnant water that they had access to in their cells; the newspapers glossed over this story, and converted it into a PR exercise; the MTC and the Chennai Corporation could not come together to identify the worst roads that should be repaired, to resume much-needed bus services; the Southern Railway did not run trains for hours on end, as the tracks got flooded — this posed a threat to the Japanese motors that power the commuter trains, and a ruined motor cannot be replaced without being imported, in this technological superpower that is India.

Here are a set of photos of what the scene was in one part of the city. By no means the best representation of the rot, but still relevant. The rains during 2008 have been worryingly in excess of the norm. If this trend continues, it is anybody’s guess what the future will look like in the “Detroit of India.”

Chennai Monsoon Scenes November 2008