Chennai MMTS ride part2

This is a continuation of a previous post. Please read part 1 here if you haven’t, so as to get complete picture.

After boarding the MMTS train, I kept looking out of the window for anything interesting. The Rajiv Gandhi Salai (formerly Canal Bank Road) was by and large deserted. Contraction work was at full force at the space adjacent to Tidel Park. The all blue Foot over bridge at Kasturbai Nagar looked interesting. Lots of greenery still prevailed on the other side of the road, which is good.

Soon after Kotturpuram, train crossed Adyar River and from here on slums occupied most of the space adjacent to tracks. River was being fed with all sort of pollutants, waste and black coloured water. Just before Mandaveli station there were lots of horses-I missed to take a proper photo of them as I didn’t notice them in time.

 

Traffic was minimal-both inside the train and also on the road. Soon action shifted to the other side of the track, where one could see Marina Beach and later Chennai Port. Lots of interesting buildings were also seen (which have been already published in previous post) I was under the impression that this train would go till central, as ticket attendant didn’t say anything while giving my ticket. However I realized little late that to go to Central I need to get down at Park Town station (from where central is walk-able)

 

Came back to Park town, learnt a new word: Punga means Park in Tamil.I was joined by Ram here, we headed towards Velachery. Few other stations also had Tamil names written in Hindi (Kadakkarai for beach), somehow light house station name was spared from translation.

We returned on towards Velachery, the last stop for the train. Elevation ends in Perungudi and on our left were a few water bodies. We got down from the train, walked a bit to shoot some birds there. Later we went much closer on bike as well. (below photos were not shot from train)

I didn’t really know we have such water bodies and birds so close. But unfortunately its unlikely that these water bodies will remain there for long as ongoing construction works are likely to destroy them. A priest was performing pooja to a Ganesha idol close to Velachery station.

MMTS is a great idea. Its utilization will go up if ample car parking is provided in MMTS stations so that car owners can park there and reach their destinations instead of driving all the way in Chennai city traffic. Having some departmental stores and other facilities/commercial activities inside will help generating revenue and also make it convenient for commuters. Further most of the MMTS stations do not have proper auto stands-forcing auto drivers to wait on main road for passengers.

More MMTS tracks are being planned around Chennai-I’m told by 2011 construction will start to extend MMTS towards Mahabalipuram.

New year took off with a very good ride. If possible need to do similar rides on other MMTS tracks. But most of them run at ground level so not sure if we get any unusual shots.