Deepavali: Passengers throng Koyambedu to leave for hometowns

CHENNAI: Koyambedu CMBT witnessed a heavy rush on Saturday with passengers leaving for their hometowns for Deepavali.

As of Saturday 6 pm, 1.74 lakh passengers have travelled in 5,295 buses from Chennai ahead of the festival.

The state transport corporations, including State Express Transport Corporation operate 16,888 special buses across the State between October 21 and 23 with10,518 buses from Chennai and 6,370 buses from other towns to facilitate the public to travel to their hometowns on the eve of Deepavali. From the city, 1.65 lakh passengers travelled in 3,300 buses on October 21 while 1.09 lakh passengers in 1,995 buses on Saturday.

As many as 1.74 lakh passengers have booked their tickets in the buses operated by the state transport undertakings to various parts of the State.

Transport Minister SS Sivasankar who inspected the Koyambedu bus terminus on Friday said that special teams were formed by the transport commissioner to check the omnibuses on the complaints of charging high fares.

Amid the complaints of the high fares collected by the omnibuses, the passengers also complained that Uber and Ola are charging two to three times the normal fares for dropping at Omni bus terminus. “I normally used to pay about Rs 200 to Rs 250 for a Koyambedu-Villivakkam ride. Today evening, both Uber and Ola were charging Rs 500-Rs 700 for the same ride. The government should take action against the app-based taxi-hailing app for fleecing the passengers,” said K Venugopal of Villivakkam.