How many passengers travel on the MTC, Chennai on an average day, and what kind of ticket do they buy?

The Detailed Project Report of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation submitted to the Union Ministry of Urban Development for funding under JNNURM contains one table with that information.

The MTC is to yet provide the full report to us despite the order of the Tamil Nadu Information Commission, but it has supplied some scrappy bits so far. This is one of them. The Division of Transportation Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, which has produced the report for MTC, says it took a middle of the week working day (07.01.2009) as the representative sample.

The file is available for download in Excel format here Category of MTC travel 2009.

Type Passengers/day

Regular commuters with ticket purchase 33,63,393

Travel As You Please pass 6,13,500

Monthly Season Tickets 1,40,652

Student concession 1,10,288

Student/Free pass 5,50,000

Total 47,77,833

Source: Detailed Project Report, MTC, 2009

More such tables will follow. It is our belief that the extraordinarily high percentage of passengers buying tickets on board is due to lack of ticketing reform. If the Travel As You Please passes were widely available, it would form the dominant ticketing format. But MTC does not wish that to happen. The scope for more advanced technologies, such as contactless ticketing, to be introduced in Chennai appears remote under such circumstances.