Gaja spares Chennai with mild showers
Cyclone Gaja passed between Nagapattinam and Vedharanyam in Tamil Nadu, crossing six districts in its entire cycle. Uprooting several trees with wind gusting at a speed of up to 120 kmph, Gaja crossed in the early hours on Friday casting a heavy spell in the surrounding areas, leaving over 25 dead. Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Friday announced a grant of ₹10 lakh each for the families of those who lost their lives, ₹1 lakh for the severely injured and ₹25,000 for those with minor injuries.
Earlier this week, Gaja was at 740 km east northeast of Chennai, but took a detour to move away from Chennai. The outskirts of Chennai experienced showers.
Based on the periodical information from the Met department, Government authorities were on alert and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was tracking the cyclone. The civic body set up a 24×7 control room and provisions to lodge complaints on water-logging or other flood-related issues through Whatsapp messaging.
Authorities had made an effective use of TN Smart, an integrated mobile application for multi-hazard potential impact assessment alert, emergency response planning and tracking.
Source: NDTV | Mint | New Indian Express
Metro slashes fares for last mile connectivity
To ensure smoother last mile connectivity, Chennai Metro has slashed the feeder service fares by half. Share auto prices will now be Rs.5 per ticket and share taxi Rs.10 per ticket. The revised fare will be in effect till January 31st.
Commuters at Guindy and Alandur have been making maximum use of these feeder services. So far, around 47,628 passengers have utilised the feeder services in the months of August and September.
Meanwhile Chennai Metro took 68 students of the municipal high school at Alandur for a free ride from Alandur to Airport and back, as part of Children’s Day celebrations. CMRL has been organising educational tours for students of government and corporation schools to create awareness on metro rail network and its benefits to commuters.
Source: The New Indian Express | The Hindu | The Times of India
Metro Water adopts new method
Water connections and dug-up roads have always seemed to go hand in hand in Chennai, but this may soon become a thing of the past if Chennai Metro Water’s new method to lay sewage pipelines becomes effective. The authority has adopted an innovative technology for laying underground sewage and water pipes, used for the first time to lay sewage pipelines at Sholinganallur under the Buckingham Canal. A 180 m long pipeline was placed under the canal to transport sewage from a pumping station on ECR to another pumping station on OMR.
In this Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) technique, there is no need for large-scale excavations as a drilling machine digs through the soil in varying diameters of five, 18 and 26 inches, to fit the pipes. Though this method is expensive it will spare the road users the risk of commuting in damaged roads.
Source: The New Indian Express
A new green patch in the city at Madhavaram
A new horticulture park at Madhavaram where water plants flourish is truly a visual treat. The city’s newest green patch houses a bog garden and is a novel concept. A bog garden is one where there is water stagnation and naturally plants that love water are grown here. The park has a number of bonsai plants too. There are two natural ponds housing small islands of grass and palm trees, and another slightly larger one, covered inch for inch by water plants.
Source: The Hindu
An app to track government buses soon
The state transport department is gearing up to launch an app and website to track the movement of the government buses. The technology will come into effect from January 2019. The department has completed geo-coding of 150,000 bus stops across the state.
Through the application, commuters can find out details of the stops, origin-destination routes and geo maps, all in a single dashboard. The move is expected to facilitate better route rationalisation and plan the bus network so as to meet the changing demands of the commuters.
Source: Deccan Chronicle
[Compiled by Sandhya Raju]