With the resumption of Namma Metro services in Bengaluru since Monday, close to six months after they were shut owing to COVID-19 restrictions, the response from the commuters has been lukewarm in the first week. While the ridership is steadily growing, it is yet to see even half of the patronage witnessed in pre-COVID-19 days, even accounting for the reduced operations and restrictions.
According to the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), the average daily ridership for the two existing lines (Purple and Green) combined was around 4.5 lakh.
But in the last four days, the highest daily ridership has been 18,925 which was recorded on Thursday.
The daily ridership so far from Monday to Thursday has been 4220 (Purple), 5645 (Purple), 14438 (both) and 18925 (both) respectively, said BMRCL chief spokesperson BY Chavan.
Senior IAS officer and BMRCL Managing Director Ajay Seth said at this point, ridership is not the priority and efforts are on to ensure that physical distancing and other COVID-19 safety regulations are maintained.
“We can only use 20% of the passenger capacity at any given time to ensure that physical distancing norms are maintained. We expect the ridership to steadily increase with both the passengers gaining confidence in the metro as a safe mode of transport and economic activities also opening-up. So we might need 15-20 days to come to a conclusion how people are reacting in the post-pandemic era. But at this point, we are not inclined to maximise ridership,” Ajay Seth told TNM.
He added, “Our appeal to big companies would be to see if they can stagger their office hours so that everybody is not forced to travel much in peak hours.”
It is also to be noted that, following the union government guidelines only 400 passengers per train will be allowed in the post-COVID-19 era as opposed to the full capacity of close to 2000.
Till Friday, the operations were scheduled to run only for six hours in the day as part of the phased reopening plan by the authorities.
As earlier reported, the metro rail services had restarted first from Monday itself along the Purple Line (Baiyappanahalli to Mysuru Road) alone, while Green Line (Yelachenahalli to Nagawara) began operating from Wednesday.
It was announced that till Thursday evening, trains on both lines will run between 8 am to 11 am, and 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm with a frequency of five minutes.
Starting Friday trains in both the lines will operate between 7 am and 9 pm. The trains will ply at a frequency of five minutes during peak hours and at 10 minutes during non-peak hours.