The idea of this blog , lest you misunderstand, is not to question the status of the city of Chennai as a metropolitan city. That in the era of emerging newer cities, the question may not be totally irrelevant is a diferent issue.
The issue is that of the "panacea" to Chennai's traffic woes, The Metro Rail. Fortunately for Delhi but unfortunately for the rest of India, teh Delhi Metro is a success. Unfortunate for rest of India ??? Stupid politicians ( now,is there an intelligent politician?) donot have the originality to think up unique and customised solutions for each city. Cut-Copy-Paste is all they can understand.
The result is that Chennai will have 4 incompatible systems of rail transport. The Beach-Tambaram line cannot interconnect with the lines to Chennai Central. The MRTS ("Flying Train " in Tamil) donot interconnect with any other suburban rail system. The Ambattur-Chennai Central suburban line will not interconnect with other systems. To add to the incompatibility, the Metro is proposed. The metro is neither metre gauge nor broad gauge, it is standard gauge. It cannot "talk" to other networks even if it wants to. The commuter is expected to travel strictly on routes on any single network only.
The talk of the metro would have been hilarious if they governments did not seem serious about it. Now, it is a tragic-comedy (with apologies to P Chidambaram). But of course, politicians who never use public transport cannot be expected to do any better.
PS Whatever will happen to plans to extend the MRTS ?
Will Park Town -Chennai Central connectivity ever happen ?
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