Hyderabad Metro Rail, which ran its services till 2 a.m. for the convenience of New Year revellers, saw as many as 4.60 lakh passengers making use of the facility. It is 40,000 more than what the mass public transport system had carried ever since it launched operations in November 2017 and without any significant incident, said metro rail officials on Wednesday.
“Passengers were very well behaved last night. There has been no untoward incident or de-boarding of any passenger. Our senior officers and security personnel monitored the services till 2 a.m,” informed managing director N.V.S. Reddy.
“We usually carry about 4.10-4.20 lakh passengers a day in the two metro corridors in operation — Miyapur to L.B. Nagar (Red Line) and Nagole to Raidurg (Blue Line).
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About 2.68 lakh passengers, used the Corridor One facility (29 km) and about 1.91 lakh used Corridor Three (28 km),” he explained.
For the Blue Line, the highest number of passengers have been from terminal station of Raidurg at 21,336 followed by 17,654 at Hi-Tec City, 14,730 at Uppal and 14,080 at Secunderabad, all recorded at the entry gates.
For the Red Line, heavy passenger footfall was witnessed at the terminal stations of L.B. Nagar (25,121), Miyapur (20,159) and KPHB (18,697). The Ameerpet inter-change station between both the corridors saw 28,696 passengers entering trains.
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Green Line launch
In the meantime, metro rail officials are giving finishing touches for launch of the remaining corridor — Jubilee Bus Station to Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station (MGBS), an 11-km stretch, which has had a contentious construction history, some time towards the month-end since the election code due to the municipal polls has come into effect.
Word is that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will be requested to inaugurate this second corridor as it will effectively complete the first phase of metro rail project of about 68 km from the originally envisaged 73 km.
The route from MGBS to Falaknuma has not been taken up due to issues of alignment and properties acquisition raised by the Majlis Party earlier. Now the issue is about the escalated cost as there has already been a delay of five years.
“We are focusing on making the entry and exit points of the stations on the second corridor ready for the passengers before commercial operations begin. We will take up other street level works beneath the stations gradually,” added Mr. Reddy.