Hyderabad Metro Rail ridership has risen to about 3 lakh passengers a day across the three traffic corridors, but it is still one lakh away from the peak of four lakh passengers a day witnessed in the pre-COVID times.
The highest number of passengers are in Corridor One or the Red Line Corridor of L.B. Nagar to Miyapur with 1.55 lakh passengers daily followed by 1.30 lakh in the Corridor Three or the Blue Line between Nagole to Raidurg and lastly, the Green Line of Corridor Two with 15,000 passengers running between Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station (MGBS)-Imlibun and Jubilee Bus Station (JBS) in Secunderabad.
Hyderabad Metro Rail Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy informed on Wednesday that the frequency of the trains has been increased with rising footfalls, with the Red Line having a train for every 4.30 minutes and on the Blue Line trains, which run every 5 minutes, frequency has been brought down to 4.30 minutes from Friday last.
The frequency for Green Line too has been reduced to 7 minutes a train from the earlier 8-9 minutes. “We are also running short loop trips between Mettuguda and Raidurg. We are running 980 trips everyday on the weekdays and about 800 on Sundays and general holidays,” he said.
Most passenger footfalls have been in L.B. Nagar (19,000) followed by Ameerpet (18,000), Miyapur and KPHB (15,000 each), Raidurg (14,000), Uppal and Dilsukhnagar (10,000 each).
L&T Metro Rail, the concessionaire which has built and runs the metro rail service across the three corridors of 69.2 km,has been using 53 train sets of three coaches each with four three-coach sets under repair or maintenance undertaken using special software based on IOT – Internet of Things, indicating the things which need attention.
The MD pointed out that each three-coach train can take between 900-1,000 passengers per trip and the project has been envisaged in such a manner that another three-coach set rake can be attached to make them into six-coach trains with the stations/depots too already planned for the increased length of the trains.
“It is not possible to attach one single coach to three-coach train sets, but we are a long way off as we can increase the frequency of the trains further if necessary to transport more passengers,” said Mr. Reddy.
