Chennai Metro Fares: How I Read the Station-to-Station Fare Table

CMRL publishes separate station-to-station tables for normal and 20% discounted fares. I worked through how to read them and when the discount applies.

Why I looked this up

I wanted to check a Chennai Metro fare between two particular stations, but the official material is a large station-to-station grid rather than a small route calculator. So I looked through Chennai Metro Rail Limited’s own tables and noted how the figures should be read.

I checked the CMRL fare page on 5 September 2026. It links to two separate charts: the normal fare table and a table showing fares after a 20% discount. The page says its last fare update was on 22 February 2021 and that the page itself was last updated on 24 September 2025.

The key point

The two PDFs answer different questions:

The normal table is headed “Single Journey Token (SJT) – Fare (in Rupees)”. Its station-to-station amounts run from ₹10 to ₹50.
The discounted table shows the corresponding fares after a 20% discount on the basic fare, ranging from ₹8 to ₹40.

That discounted column is not a universal cash or counter fare. In its press release dated 2 January 2026, CMRL attaches the 20% discount to the NCMC Card and digital QR tickets, including WhatsApp, Paytm, PhonePe and the Digital Store Value Pass in the CMRL mobile app. The same release explicitly excludes Single Journey Paper QR tickets purchased at ticketing counters.

How I read the grid

My reading order is:

Open the normal fare PDF first.
Locate the origin station on one axis and the destination on the other.
Read the amount where the two stations meet.
Use that as the normal fare.
Check the discounted PDF only when the intended ticket or payment method qualifies for CMRL’s 20% discount.

The amounts paired by CMRL’s two tables are:

Normal fare	Fare in the 20% discounted table
₹10	₹8
₹20	₹16
₹30	₹24
₹40	₹32
₹50	₹40

This conversion table helps me check that I have not accidentally quoted a discounted figure as the ordinary counter fare.

Two examples from the tables

For Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Metro–Airport, the normal table shows ₹40, while the discounted table shows ₹32. The ₹32 figure applies only with an eligible NCMC or digital QR ticket under CMRL’s stated discount conditions.

For Airport–Washermenpet, the normal table shows ₹50 and the discounted table shows ₹40. Again, ₹40 should not be presented as the general paper-ticket fare at the counter.

What I would check before quoting a fare

Here is the compact checklist I made for myself:

Are both station names taken from the same CMRL chart?
Is the figure from the normal table or the 20% discounted table?
If it is discounted, is the journey being paid for using NCMC or an eligible digital QR ticket?
Is it instead a Single Journey Paper QR ticket bought at a ticketing counter? If so, CMRL says the 20% discount does not apply.
Have I labelled the amount as a normal or discounted fare rather than simply calling it “the fare”?

What I looked up next

The useful distinction was not merely between ₹40 and ₹32, or ₹50 and ₹40. It was between the fare printed in a particular table and the ticket condition that makes that table applicable.

For my own future checks, I would therefore begin with the live CMRL fare page rather than saving only one of the PDFs. That page keeps the normal and discounted charts together, while CMRL’s current ticketing notice supplies the condition needed to interpret the discounted figures correctly.