The Hindu : Few takers so far

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 28, 2003

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Few takers so far

Hyderabad's MMTS is yet to draw commuters in large numbers. K.V.S. Madhav looks at the reasons why.

THE COACHES of the Multi-Modal Transport System in brilliant blue trumpeted as the answer to the traffic blues in the twin cities present a sorry sight. They go empty most of the time. The initial euphoria has died down and there are no wide-eyed citizens with children in tow taking joyrides. A month-and-a-half after its launch, the MMTS is already limping thanks to poor patronage.

So much so the South Central Railway General Manager, T. Stanley Babu, has even announced that they were contemplating reducing the number of coaches on each train. At present, just about 12,000 passengers use the MMTS every day. "There are hardly any takers for the morning and noon services. We cannot run empty trains. It will not serve the people or the Railways," he says.

The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation in the city region ferries as many as 28 lakh commuters and earns about Rs.1 crore every day. Evidently, Hyderabad is no Mumbai when it comes to suburban rail travel even if the MMTS rates are less than the bus services. "We have pressed into service feeder services to transport people alighting at MMTS stations, but the response is dismal. These buses run empty," the APSRTC City regional manager, C. Panduranga Murthy, points out.

If the MMTS trains are rolling minus patronage, it is nothing new to Hyderabad because poor passenger traffic has been the bane of the existing suburban train services. While the Rs. 169.9-crore MMTS project covers new areas cutting through the heart of the city, suburban rail services have been serving the suburbs for almost three decades now. Never developed as a mass mode of transport, the old system has a cluster of 27 railway stations scattered across a 69-km stretch from Medchal to Umdanagar along the Nanded and Bangalore main lines with Secunderabad as the terminus. Here too, stations barely sell tickets worth a few hundred rupees everyday. The gauge conversion works on these lines had weaned away whatever loyal clientele the services had.

So, have the officials jumped the gun in launching the MMTS before all facilities were in place? That there was a mad scramble to line up the service to meet the political deadline at the cost of crucial links is clearly evident. "No new service will hit big time straightaway. It needs to stabilise overcoming operational problems," officials of the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad contend.

So glaring are the missing links that in some places such as Hitec City, where the entire software industry of Hyderabad is located, Fatehnagar, Bharatnagar and Borabanda the approach roads were not proper and the feeder services were far from unsatisfactory.

An opinion survey conducted by L&T, consultants for the MCH and the Ministry of Railways, among the current users of MMTS throws light on some of the missing links. Though the regular commuters feel the ride to be "comfortable, reliable and safe", they want the frequency of the trains to be increased, more so during the afternoons. They also wanted better synchronisation of the services with the office hour traffic and the long distance train schedules. The number of the feeder bus services should also be increased. The survey also brought into focus the delay in arriving at a combined train-bus ticket.

Based on the survey, the agency has recommended the trains' frequency be increased to 15 minutes during peak hours and 30 minutes at other times. But, SCR officials insist this can be done only when the number of users increases.

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