Vehicles Tailback on Chennai-Tiruchy NH as Lakhs Return After Holidays

Chennai:The Chennai-Tiruchy national highway witnessed bumper-to-bumper traffic from Sunday night to Monday morning as lakhs of people returned to the city after the quarterly holidays for students, besides three continuous holidays from Gandhi Jayanthi.

The quarterly holidays for the school students ended on October 4 while the weekend holidays from Gandhi Jayanthi gave people time to go to their native places or tourist places. But people had to return on Monday for their work places and students to their schools. Since most people preferred to return on Monday, the Chennai-Tiruchy road faced traffic congestion from Sunday night.

Though the road saw tailbacks of vehicles from Singaperumalkoil, the traffic from Perungalathur to Tambaram moved inch by inch taking a long time to cross the stretch as lakhs of people returned in cars and vans, private and government buses. The train passengers who got down at Tambaram railway station found it difficult to get Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) buses from Tambaram which fell short. People got into the buses with their baggage and children amid the heavy rush. Those unable to get buses turned to autos and were fleeced by the drivers. The suburban trains too witnessed heavy crowds with people hanging near the footboards in all coaches from early morning.

Usually, police personnel used to be deployed to regulate and divert traffic to several roads to ease the rush on the Chennai-Tiruchy highway. But, the number of policemen was not sufficient since most of them had gone for the Madhuranthagam by-poll security.

As express trains reached Tambaram one by one, thousands of passengers queued up before the counters to get tickets for suburban trains leading to long queues from early morning. The railways had not deployed sufficient police personnel to regulate the crowd. Tambaram bus stand too witnessed a heavy crowd with shortage of buses. Those who turned to auto drivers were chargedd Rs 500 to Chrompet, Rs 700 for Pallavaram and Rs. 1,000 to the airport. Passengers were arguing that they bought tickets for Rs 450 to go to Tirunelveli from Chennai and now the auto drivers are demanding Rs 500 for Chromepet.

A large number of people got down at Kilambakkam bus terminus and took buses to the city. The MTC buses were jam packed from early morning on Monday till afternoon.