Narrow Park Town footbridge causes daily congestion; Railways cite severe space constraints

CHENNAI: For the thousands of passengers using the Park Town railway station every day, it is a tense and taxing experience to get past the foot overbridge (FOB), the only access point to the station, which is a crucial interchange between MRTS services and the MMC suburban trains – Central Metro Rail hub.

Sandwiched between the Cooum and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, the station has only one entry and exit point. The situation at Park Town, which handles 30 per cent of MRTS passengers, only worsened after the major infrastructure changes.

During the fourth-line work between Chennai Beach and Egmore stations, the station was converted from a side-platform layout into a single island platform. The pedestrian subway that once linked the platforms was closed, but the FOB that was constructed is too narrow.

Each time a train from Velachery or Beach arrives, crowds surge onto the FOB from both directions. Commuters say it often takes five to ten minutes to cross the bridge. “There is barely space to walk. People are forced to push ahead in a tightly packed queue,” said a regular passenger.

Women, senior citizens, and school students find the bottleneck especially risky. “One slip is enough for a fall. The bridge must be widened or an additional walkway built,” said another commuter.

Passengers also note the difficulty of climbing the stairs to reach Chennai Central station and MMC. “A lift should have been provided for senior citizens and differently abled travellers,” said R Padmini, a daily user.

For many, the congestion is compounded by the lack of direct MRTS–suburban connectivity. “Before the fourth-line work, cross-sectoral trains linked Arakkonam and Tiruttani trains with OMR and Velachery. But even after the work, those services did not resume,” said K Saravanan of Avadi, adding that restoring them would reduce footbridge congestion significantly.

Footfall is expected to rise once the long-delayed Velachery–St Thomas Mount line opens, increasing MRTS patronage.

Railway officials said the FOB was built with extreme space limitations. “The station is on an island platform with closely spaced tracks. Widening it further is technically impossible,” an official said. A lift has been planned to ease movement, and signage and crowd dispersal measures are being strengthened, the official added.