Madurai Railway Station Junction needs more infrastructure

Many suggest that the best solution will be to improve the Koodal Nagar station and make use of it like the T Nagar or Tambaram stations in Chennai. Except for the Guruvayur Express, other trains do not halt at this station, though the station has vast potential.

"Koodal Nagar station should be developed next to Madurai because almost half of the population of Madurai lives in this region. It will greatly ease the congestion at Madruai Junction," Jayaprakasam said.

However, Madurai Junction has lot of operational difficulties which has to be addressed immediately, say the employees here.

"Madurai Junction in fact does not have doubling because it ends with the Vaigai river. It means either reception or despatch at a single time," a railway staff explained. Due to this, two trains cannot be operated at a single time though there is doubling from Dindigul. Another challenge is that the station does not have an alternative other than platform number one to receive any goods train with many wagons. Platform one is congested most of the time with more number of trains being operated from there.

"When a goods train enters during peak hour, it becomes a herculean task to handle the other trains. Despatching trains late to other divisions will get us a black mark and railways gives lot of importance to goods traffic as well. It creates huge tension among the staff from various sections at those moments," another railway employee said.

sourced from t i m e s o f i n d i a

Chennai to Madurai - Railways, Road Transport

Given the situation that more and more people from South are moving to North Tamil Nadu, other states and other countries for work and for personal reasons, there is lesser skilled labours population in Southern districts of Tamil Nadu. That is totally a different problem altogether, in the interests of this article.

If the people travelling from Chennai to Madurai and other southern districts are more, eventually there is a great demand for transport.

Say for example - for a trip to home town in Diwali season or long weekends, it becomes very very tough for all the passengers. We don't even get tickets and it is all Waiting List. Within one day, tickets are sold for Diwali season. Long queues in railway bookings. This is the situation in Railways. Why don't Railways Ministry increase the trains? I know there are special trains, but even special trains queue was booked just within 1 day.

Same situation is with Bus. In Road transport, what happens is people sell tickets for higher rates and really unreasonable rates, since there is lot of demand.

We would request more regulation from Government in all these (agents increasing ticket rates) and also increase the number of transport mechanisms, which will be useful for the general public!!

Basically - Improve Transport in and around Madurai and to/from North, since Madurai is connecting all the places around for southern districts and northern districts.