Hyderabad: MMTS services struggle with punctuality, frequency

The suburban sections of the Hyderabad and Secunderabad divisions of the South Central Railway (SCR) zone network reached their saturation point and need expansion with available sources.

Hyderabad: Lack of punctuality and frequency in running the Multi-Modal Transport System (MMTS) is causing hardships to daily rail commuters. MMTS services are essential for employees to avoid traffic jams and commute on time. Passengers are facing difficulties as few services are running without proper timing.

There is no separate railway track for MMTS trains to run on, which is the main reason for not preparing a regular schedule to run the MMTS trains on the busy stretches. The suburban sections of the Hyderabad and Secunderabad divisions of the South Central Railway (SCR) zone network reached their saturation point and need expansion with available sources.

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“Moreover, there are no platforms earmarked for MMTS trains at Secunderabad and trains arrive at any platform. Until the last minute, there will be no announcement on which platform the train will arrive. Passengers are often confused,” said Naresh Kumar, a software employee.

There are separate corridors for suburban train services in other Metro cities like Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata, but there is no separate line over here. Due to this, the MMTS is slowly fading due to several reasons, including punctuality, frequent cancellations, and extended halts in areas. On the other hand, the occupancy rate is slowly decreasing. Prior to the pandemic, the daily ridership was over 1.6 lakh passengers and currently, the passenger footfall is between 40,000 to 50,000. Due to this, from 121 train services earlier, the services have been reduced to 11.

Noor Ahmed, general secretary, Suburban Train & Bus Travellers Association, said, “There has been no proper punctuality in train services for a long time now. There is no separate corridor for MMTS trains. Superfast, Express and Goods trains are moving on the same track. Now, even after spending over Rs 700 crore for the Secunderabad railway station redevelopment, no additional platforms are built.”

Additionally, commuters of various sections like Ghatkesar-Lingampally are demanding one more train in the evening hours, as in this stretch, very often; trains are made to stop to enable the passage of mainline trains and good trains. Since there are only two tracks for up and down trains for goods, superfast trains, suburban MMTS trains and other passenger trains, when the superfast train is coming on the same track, other trains are detained in a loop line which affects the timings. It is noteworthy that while thousands of people travel regularly from Medchal to Secunderabad, Ghatkesar and Malkajigiri towards the IT corridor, not more than four or five services run.

Four more services sought

There are 2000 IT employees running only one train on the Ghatkesar to Hitech City route. This MMTS reaches Charlapally, Neredment, Bhoodevinagar, Suchitra, Ferozguda, Sanathnagar, Bharatnagar, Lingampalli. Although the development of these stations has been undertaken with Rs 600 crore, there is not much benefit in running a single train.

MMTS from Ghatkesar reaches Lingampalli at 8 am and runs on Secunderabad and Lingampalli routes. In the evening, the same train runs from Lingampalli to Ghatkesar, so the employees do not miss a turn. They want to increase four more services.

Railway officials say that there is an opportunity to start new ones only after the Cherlapalli terminal is made available. They said that minor difficulties are inevitable till then. There is no possibility of making new services available at present.