CHENNAI: Lakhs of daily commuters are likely to struggle in the coming weeks, as the Southern Railway announced drastic reduction in EMU services to undertake station redevelopment project at Egmore.
Suburban EMU services in the Chennai Beach–Tambaram–Chengalpattu corridor will run at reduced frequency for 45 days from February 20 to April 5, as Platforms 10 and 11 at Egmore station will be out of service for structural works under the station redevelopment project.
With suburban services shifting to express-line platforms, 5 and 6, the division said it will cut the services from 204 trains a day to 164.
Though Southern Railway maintained during the press briefing that it had been communicating with the State, the move appears to have caught State’s transport agencies off guard.
Speaking to DT Next, MTC managing director T Prabhushankar said the announcement came “all of a sudden”, without any prior communication. “We proactively reached out after their presser but they are yet to give the detailed breakdown regarding the reduction. Once we receive that, the MTC, along with the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA), will devise a plan to manage the crowd,” he said.
MTC officials are miffed that such last-minute announcements have become routine, often leaving it to bear the brunt of swelling passenger crowds.
The busy corridor, which sees an estimated 3–5 lakh commuters daily, is expected to feel the sharpest impact in the core Chennai Beach–Tambaram section, where down services will fall from 47 to 25 and up services from 47 to 17. In the Chennai Beach–Chengalpattu stretch, services will dip from about 36–37 to 30 in the down direction and from 36 to 33 in the up direction.
“To partly ease the drop, some trains will be short-run between Egmore and Tambaram,” said Shailendra Singh, Divisional Railway Manager, Chennai Division. Of the reduced services towards Tambaram and Chengalpattu, 11 trains in each direction will originate from and terminate at Egmore. It is “not technically feasible” to maintain services at existing frequency or operate shuttle trains between Chennai Beach and Egmore, he added.
The disruption is part of the ongoing Egmore station redevelopment project, which involves construction of a large roof canopy requiring deep foundation columns on the platforms.