Chennai Buzz: On-street parking rolled-out | Metro Phase-1 extension complete | UTS re-introduced…and more

Weekly update on happenings across the city

On-street parking in 32 spots

In a bid to streamline parking management, the civic body rolled out the on-street parking project in Chennai last week. The project has been in trial since 2019 in 32 places and was inaugurated formally in Anna Nagar, T. Nagar and Besant Nagar. 

With this project, the civic body has collected Rs 1 lakh a day and has created 9,200 parking lots which can be booked with an application designed to allow users to find vacant spots. 

Source: The Hindu | The Times of India


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Metro Phase-1 extension to be inaugurated

The Metro Phase-1 extension project is all set to be inaugurated on February 14th. The stretch from Washermanpet to Wimco Nagar will have seven stations excluding the Tiruvottiyur station as the work remains incomplete. CMRL has stated that the work got impacted by the delay in acquiring land. 

Five years after inauguration, Chennai metro still sports the disabled-unfriendly tag. Pic: CMRL

The extension project, which was kickstarted five years ago, connects North Chennai to the southern part of the city. An initial increase of %% patronage is expected by CMRL once the line is opened to the public. Indicating that ticket prices also play an important role in ridership, a CMRL official added that the fares could be brought down to boost the ridership.

Source: The Hindu | The Times of India


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UTS app re-introduced

The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS-on-Mobile Application) facility will be re-introduced from February 8th in the suburban rails. Following are the routes for which mobile tickets can be booked on UTS: Chennai – Tiruvallur, Royapuram –Gummidipoondi, Chennai Beach – Chengalpattu and Chennai Beach –Velachery (MRTS).

The southern railways also plan to put up exclusive counters for recharging the UTS wallet at Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore, Chennai Beach, Mambalam, Tambaram, Perambur, Avadi, Tiruvottiyur and at Chennai Park Town and Velachery. But the renewal and fresh purchase of season passes and platform tickets through UTS has been temporarily disabled.

Source: The New Indian Express

More funds for traffic management

Infrastructure development agencies in Chennai will receive additional funds to operate and maintain the Chennai Metropolitan Area Intelligent Transport Systems.

The tender process will begin after seeking agreement from the state government and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for sanctioning Rs 240 crore. This amount is in addition to the ₹660 crore already earmarked for the project. It will be used to monitor, upgrade and maintain the infrastructure for providing effective traffic management services to the city residents. 

The first phase of the project will include the construction of an efficient traffic system to manage the increasing demands. One of the projects is the installation of an adaptive traffic signal control system at 165 junctions where the civic body will execute improvements. 

Source: The Hindu

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(Compiled by Bhavani Prabhakar)

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