Chennai: The surge in demand from the public has led the state transportation department to start the Direct State Transport Corporation (Setc) bus from Thiruvottiyur in Chennai to Coimbatore and Rameswaram from Tuesday.
These buses will not touch CMBT and the Koyambedu-vacation route and instead take the GST road to reach the National Highway-45.
Usually the passengers are bound south of the North Chennai Board bus in CMBT but during weekends or festive seasons, chairs are hard to find.
“At the time of us (workers from the industry in Thiruvottitiyur) reached the position of the bus after work that day, most of the seats were occupied.
So, we finally stood up for half a trip,” said Sreenivasan, who works at a local tire factory.
KP Shankar, DMK MLA from Thiruvottiyur said two new bus services were in accordance with the promise of his party polls.
“More buses will be operated for Hosur, Tirupati and Kankumumari,” he said.
These buses will stop at the main transit points such as Salem (on the way to Coimbatore) and Trichy (Rameshwaram) so that passengers can go down and get local buses to their respective villages or cities, said an official setc.
New bus services are also revived in the city.
Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Chennai, has continued bus services along the four routes from Thiruvottiyur to Broadway (C56C route number), CMBT (15B extension), industrial estate (3B) and tambaram (1b) from Monday.
The service along the four routes was stopped in 2007 because of poor protection and since then residents of Thiruvottiyur depend on sharing auto or taking several MTC buses to reach the transit point or work.
Of the four services, the bus to Broadway and CMBT will be run as an ordinary service where women can travel for free.
The other two are express and deluxe services.