L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH), constructing and running the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) project, is expecting the overall ridership to be about one million a day, once it completes the remaining stretches of Hi-Tec City to Raidurg (1.5 km) on Corridor 3 and Jubilee Bus Station (JBS) to Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station (MGBS) or about 9.5 km on Corridor 2 later this year.
This will ensure the first phase of metro rail project will be completed to the tune of 66 km in all three elevated corridors even as the last stretch on Corridor 2 between MGBS to Falaknuma of about 5.5 km left incomplete.
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With the current ridership crossing the 3-lakh mark, Metro rail officials are confident of attracting more passengers into the public transport system with the proposed first and last mile connectivity with private partnership. Discussions are being held with TSRTC to ensure “bus transport become complementary rather than compete with metro rail”.
The concessionnaire is also banking on the government building the airport metro link from Raidurg or Mindspace junction via Gachbowli towards RGIA at Shamshabad of little above 30 km for ridership to increase as it would provide quick connectivity, avoiding road traffic.
Although this work is yet to begin, the government has also indicated that it would like to build more elevated metro lines connecting to other suburbs like BHEL-Ramachandrapuram and altogether another 50 km has been targeted and these routes too will be connected to the existing network, according to details in the company’s annual report.
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While that is a long shot, L&TMRH has been looking at non-fare revenue generating options like leasing out space for mobile towers, skywalks connecting to malls and metros, tie-up with cab operators, leasing out optic fibre spare capacity, consultancy services for other metros, improving advertising revenues, re-negotiate claims with contractors and arrears of power dues.