CHENNAI: Southern Railway handles close to 20 lakh commuters per day and is the second largest public transport operator in the city. But it has emerged as a major stumbling block in the state government’s attempts to introduce common ticketing across all modes of transport.
A common ticket, smart card or app for MTC buses, suburban trains, MRTS and metro rail has been in discussion for the last 10 years. The railways has yet again made promises when the government attempted to revive the project last week under Cumta (Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority).
However, a series of issues like red tape, multiple levels of approvals, a reluctance to sync its ticketing servers, inability to install ticket checking machines at stations and trains and shoddy monitoring of commuters are some of the reasons that the railways says prevent it from being part of the common ticketing space.
