Redhills to Tambaram - Route no 114 A/c Volvo

The aircon volvo proved all detractors wrong. Most of the people scoffed at the idea of starting a volvo ac bus from Redhills. Redhills is a suburb in the northern fringe of the city. Apart from its location on the nh, it is also a major market for rice from british days. It is a meeting point for ambattur, tiruvallur, nellore and the eastern costal villages.

MTC started with four buses. The buses are full even during non peak hours. During peak hours, one can get  a seat if lucky. When the first four buses started, the conductors were polite and smiling. Now the ac buses have become full and overflowing. Conducors have become rude and have started doing crowd control!!! Yelling, snapping, goading has become part of life like in the normal non ac buses!

Like in the case of all other bus services, the timings of the ac buses from Redhills are kept as a secret by MTC. They challenge the traveller to find out or pray its their lucky day!! The patronage could be up by atleast 30% if the MTC were to atlest give "indicative" timings!!!!

MTC website on cue!

Yesterday, I was wondering when our city would have a interactive transport website. Today "The HIndu" in anrticle http://www.hindu.com/2010/10/21/stories/2010102161030300.htm wrote an article. I went further and checked the information in
http://chennaicityconnect.com/project-blogs/public-transport/mtc-website/ . Well, it is nice to know that we are on the way!

Using technology to track urban travel

I saw this interesting blog today.
 http://digihub.watoday.com.au/node/1880

What they have done in Australia is not rocket science. It is a sincere effort to bring various agencies under one single point. It is not costly to build and can be implemented easily in Chennai with little imagination.. There maybe claims that the large number of people may not use the facility. This is wrong. The details can be used in public display even in rural areas.

It can also be tweaked to indicate if there are seats available in long distance buses entering mofossil areas. It will be here eventually.... how soon is the question!