AC trains to Chengalpet on the anvil

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has initiated preliminary discussions with Southern Railway to operate air-conditioned suburban trains on certain corridors, multiple sources told TOI recently.
Currently, the state government through Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) runs air-conditioned metro services till the Chennai airport on the southern part of the city. The regions beyond the airport on the GST road, like Chromepet, Tambaram, Vandalur, Guduvanchery and Chengalpet have seen a huge influx of middle class professionals who live there and commute to the city for work.
As far as officials are concerned, they are a catchment area for travel by the metro trains, sources said.
Officials said instead of a metro line, one of the options could be to enter into an agreement with SR and create a corridor on the existing Beach-Tambaram-Chengalpet section for running air-conditioned suburban trains every five or seven minutes, akin to metro services.
“This would be for a clientele willing to pay a fare much higher than the inexpensive suburban train,” said a senior official.
There are two dedicated suburban lines till Tambaram, but from there till Chengalpet there are only two lines, with a much delayed third line under construction. If the fourth line is laid, such services can be contemplated, sources said.
The agreement would be to jointly fund land, track as well as costs to purchase AC coaches, sources said. Indian Railways’ manufacturing unit Integral Coach Factory (ICF) has already started producing AC EMU rakes in Chennai.
Earlier, the undivided Andhra Pradesh state government had funded EMU coaches for the MMTS project in Hyderabad, while the Karnataka government has funded MEMU rakes as well, said an official.
The state government has collected data from railway officials in Chennai on the four suburban corridors where SR runs suburban trains. However, state government sources said the plan is extremely preliminary and will take time to materialise.
There have been a couple of meetings with the officials of Chennai division in this regard recently.
This comes even as SR has indicated to the Railway Board that it would be willing to run AC EMU services on some of its corridors. SR is also in talks with a private university to run a chartered AC EMU train from Velachery to Sullurpeta for its teaching and non-teaching staff.
As per railway rules, the fare on AC EMUs is 1.3 times the first class fare.