‘Why can’t we access the low-floor buses? Ask people from Chennai resettlement sites

On 30 December 2024, MTC  released the updated list of routes for low-floor buses by adding 94 more buses to make it a total of 502 buses.

Joel Shelton Terrance F

Published Jan 01, 2025 | 4:56 PM ⚊ Updated Jan 01, 2025 | 4:56 PM

The interior of a low-floor bus. (X)

Reach the Unreached is a collective initiative by a few like-minded individuals interested in uplifting and empowering the vulnerable and underprivileged people, including women, children, migrant workers, urban poor and those in informal settlements in Tamil Nadu capital Chennai.

We have been operating since March 2020 and are working towards creating a space where everyone receives all government schemes and services with appropriate self-respect and dignity.

As of 29 November 2024, the MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation [Chennai] Ltd) released the list of routes for 408 low-floor buses on their X handle.

A person with disabilities boarding the Low-floor Bus. (Sathish Kumar R)

It included 78 bus routes, with almost a quarter of all the buses starting from Broadway Bus Terminus (99), followed by the Kilambakkam Bus Terminus (56), MGR Koyambedu (45), Thyagaraya Nagar (35) and Tambaram (33 nos), to various routes.

On 30 December 2024, MTC  released the updated list of routes for low-floor buses by adding 94 more buses to make it a total of 502 buses. In it, they introduced 24 new routes and 68 buses were allotted to these routes.

By initiating 24 new routes, the existing four routes such as 71EX, 206, 159A and 70F, were removed, and the seven buses were reallocated to various other routes.

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Low Floor Bus Routes as of 30 December 2024

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Training the bus staff

R Satish Kumar, a Member of Disability Rights Alliances (DRA), said, “After several years, we have started to commute using the low floor buses, which helps us save money and makes us independent to travel. But, there must be necessary training for the conductors and drivers on the operation of ramps, tiling the bus and plugging the wheelchair belt, so that they will be organised to help us ease the journey. Regarding bus stops, the design needs to be more accessible with level boarding so that boarding and deboarding will be easy.”

He stated that the bus should be available on all the routes, especially in deprived communities.”

Bus routes.

After the routes were updated on 30 December 2024, the number of low-floor buses decreased in nearly 12 routes, which has resulted in many elderly persons and Persons with Disability (PwD) losing the opportunity to access the buses that were available for them.

However, the deprived communities, such as Perumbakkam SCB, have only one bus functioning from their depot on the route to MGR Koyambedu.

Similarly, Semmencherry SCB and Kannagi Nagar SCB were left out without allotting any buses to their depot. In Perumbakkam and Semmencherry resettlement sites, there are more than 27,000 families whose major transportation system is the public buses.

According to the data shared by the 3 December Movement, in Perumbakkam and Semmencherry Resettlement site, there are around 400 PwDs and elderly people who have to travel at least 20 to 30 km for work daily.

Shankar (name changed) resettled to Perumbakkam in the year 2017, and for the past seven years, he has been travelling from Perumbakkam to Triplicane for his work. He is a person with a disability who uses the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) to travel.

“There is only one low-floor bus from Perumbakkam to Koyambedu, which is timely. Often, I don’t get access, but at times when I board it, I need to de-board the bus at SRP Tool and wait for another bus to reach my workplace. It would be great if 102 P or 102 C series low-floor buses were available from our terminus,” he said.

This author, a Policy Researcher at Reach the Unreached, has been constantly highlighting via X the issue of the low-floor buses not being equally distributed across the city as well as the availability of only 100 low-floor buses in Coimbatore and Madurai.

We have compared the data published by MTC, and we request the inclusion of low-floor buses in 24 additional routes and their extension to the resettlement sites of Perumbakkam SCB, Semmencherry SCB and Kannagi Nagar, which is within the MTC limit.

(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)

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