Over eight lakh people leave Chennai to their natives for Pongal

CHENNAI: For the second day in a row, an exodus of people leaving for their home towns for the Pongal festival continues with over eight lakh people leaving by buses and trains from the city on Saturday.

Apart from the people leaving the city through public transit, people left to their native places using personal vehicles leading to heavy congestion on GST road.

According to the transport corporation officials, nearly 4.5 lakh people are expected to travel by the buses operated by various corporations till Saturday midnight. Three lakh people left for their native places using the train services while one lakh people made use of the omnibus services.

Altogether, nearly 8.5 lakh people left the city through the transport corporation buses, omnibuses and trains.

To decongest the city traffic, the transport corporations are operating buses from seven terminus including CMBT at Koyambedu, newly built Kilambakkam terminus and Madhavaram terminus for various routes. Due to the shifting of the SETC bus services which travel via GST road to Kilambakkam, the Koyambedu terminus would be overflowing with the passengers inflow previously remained relatively less crowded.

However, the Kilambakkam terminus witnessed a steady flow of passengers who had booked their tickets through the SETC buses. Many passengers complained about the long distance they were forced to travel to board the SETC buses.

Transport Minister SS Sivasankar reviewed the outstation bus operations from Madhavaram and Poonamallee terminus on Saturday and interacted with passengers, drivers and conductors. On Friday, the first day of operation of special buses, a total of 1.94 lakh passengers travelled on 3,360 buses. On Saturday, till 4 pm, 85,131 passengers travelled on 1729 buses.