Govt app tells commuters to wait 19,280 minutes for MTC bus
31.12.2025
Omjasvin.MD@timesofindia.com
Chennai : Booking an MTC bus ticket on the govt’s Chennai One App may put you in for a long wait — sometimes as long as 19,000 minutes, which translates to 13 days. Hyped as a platform on the lines of top cab aggregators to book tickets and track buses, the App was designed to enable passengers to book tickets on the go and view bus movement in real time.
However, tech glitches and poor GPS integration have rendered the feature largely unusable. In the app, a bus on route 101 from Nerkundram to MGR Central was shown to arrive in 19,280 minutes. Another user booking from Rohini Theatre to Panagal Park (route 72) saw a wait time of 16,455 minutes, which is 10 days. While these buses came in less than 30 minutes of booking, commuters were left clueless while planning their trips.
The problem was worse for the old whiteboard buses, where no live trackers appeared at all, leaving commuters in the dark about whether a bus was five minutes away or already gone. At MGR Central, commuters who booked ordinary fare services such as 28 from Egmore to Thiruvottiyur, said the bus movement was not visible at all in the App, and there was no information on when the next bus would come. K Sathish Kumar, who was waiting at the Old Central Bus Stand, said he waited for 30 minutes and then left by metro.
The issue is that not all MTC buses are equipped with GPS trackers. Furthermore, some buses are not integrated with the App. While the new Ashok Leyland low-floor, ultra-low-floor, and EV buses are integrated with better GPS right from the start, the older rickety ordinary fare buses are yet to receive the upgrade. “There are 3,500 buses, and even a small wire cut in the GPS tracker may lead to wrong information showing in the app. These are glitches that will be addressed,” said Cumta (Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority) member-secretary I Jeyakumar. MTC joint managing director R Sundarapandian, who is the official spokesperson for the corporation, was not available for comment
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