CHENNAI: Many city roads had heavy traffic congestion as people left for home for Deepavali.
As the city received intermittent rainfall since Thursday, major arterial roads - Poonamalle High Road, Inner Ring Road, OMR, Anna Salai, and GST have been witnessing huge traffic over the past two days.
On Friday evening, omnibuses and government buses heading to Tiruchy from Koyambedu were diverted to the Outer Ring Road instead of the Inner Ring Road and GST. As a result, when the vehicles from ORR tried to enter GST road in Vandalur, vehicular movement came to a standstill. There was a pile-up for more than five km on the Tambaram - Tiruchy NH, causing congestion in Singaperumal Koil and Perungalathur.
Similarly, southern and eastern parts of the city - Thiruvanmiyur, Sholinganallur, Thuraipakkam, and Semmancheri - also witnessed heavy congestion.
In a statement, the transport department said about 1.3 lakh commuters travelled by government buses on Thursday and the same number of people will likely travel on Friday as well. “A total of 2.26 lakh people reserved tickets for travelling from TNSTC and SETC buses,” added the statement.
Omnibus owners said about 1.2 lakh passengers travelled by omnibuses since Thursday. “Another 60,000 commuters may leave the City on Saturday. The commuters were not charged more than what was informed to the government,” said A Anbalagan, President, the All Omni Bus Owners Association.
The trains that operated from Chennai Egmore and Central also ran with overloaded passengers in unreserved coaches. Following the complaints, the Chennai division of Southern Railway conducted a special drive against unauthorised travellers. In a statement, the railway said a total of 4,657 cases of ticketless/irregular travel were registered by 535 ticket-checking staff on duty, leading to the realisation of Rs 27.16 lakh in penalty. “This was the highest per day earnings of the division. The last highest penalty collection by the Chennai division was Rs 20.19 lakh on October 12.” added the statement.