Hyderabad Metro Rail authorities announced that as many as 1.18 lakh passengers rode on the metro service on the 30-km route -- Nagole-Ameerpet-Miyapur -- on August 26 on the Rakshabandhan day and on the subsequent Monday (August 27), it carried 1.10 lakh people.
Expressing happiness over the increased patronage of the services, HMR Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy said on Tuesday it was an indication that citizens are ready to take to public transport. He was quite sure the number of passengers would only increase further once the Ameerpet-L.B. Nagar route is opened “soon”.
Also, the Ameerpet-Hitec City route later in November when the L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH) is planning to increase the number of trains and their frequency. It proposes to run a train every four minutes instead of the current once in six minutes during peak hours and once in eight minutes in non-peak hours. On number of passengers on the two days referred to here, he said not very surprisingly, the terminal stations Nagole - 11,481 / 9,339 & and Miyapur - 13,118 / 7,291 saw the highest footfall followed by the interchange station of Ameerpet 11,975 / 13,208.
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In the last few months, metro rail authorities had put up waste bins on stations / platforms, streaming probable arrival of the next train and had opened up toilets for free use.