CHENNAI: Suburban commuters faced inconvenience and had to travel on crowded trains to the city, especially on the Tiruvallur-Chennai route, as Railways operated fewer trains during peak hours on Tuesday.
Railways had announced that the Sunday pattern of suburban train schedules would be followed due to heavy rain and flooding. Trains were operated at a frequency of half an hour to 45 minutes in the morning as against frequency of 10 minutes interval on weekdays.
Commuters said Railways should have operated more trains during peak hours to handle the weekday crowd instead of sticking to a Sunday pattern of time table which is not designed for a working day.
V Srinivasan, a commuter, said, “Travelling to the city was tough today because the number of trains were not enough for the peak hour crowd on a working day. The trains were crowded at Tiruvallur itself. Women commuters struggled. People had to hop across tracks to board an eight-car MEMU train that arrived at a different platform.”
He also said that train delays added to the crowd. “A 7.05am train to the city reached around half an hour late.”
