Namma Metro Reach 3 and 3A, on its second day of operations, continued to draw huge crowds — families with young children, college students and even the elderly — who took joyrides out of curiosity on the new metro route.
As many as 51,000 curious Bangaloreans took a metro ride on Sampige Road-Peenya line on Sunday.
Pradeep Singh Kharola, managing director, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., described Sunday’s response as “good”.
The weekend crowd was mainly curious commuters going on a joyride; regular passengers, who would use the metro for commuting to work, would begin using it from Monday.
“Monday is the big day. We will know then how people respond to this line. It would take at least a week for the traffic to stabilise,” he said.
Pradeep Kumar, a resident of Peenya, travelled on the metro with his wife and three children from Peenya to Sampige Road.
He said that they had suffered much for the last two years, as metro work had created traffic snarls everyday. He was elated to travel to Malleshwaram in less than 15 minutes, after years of traffic snarls.
Ruchi, his 10-year-old daughter, said she had wanted to travel in the metro ever since work had begun near the family’s house in Peenya.
As witnessed on Saturday, stations at Sampige Road and Peenya were the ones that drew the lion’s share of tickets being sold on this reach. Of the total 51,663 tickets sold till 8 p.m., 30,025 were sold in these two stations.
Meanwhile, the baggage scanners on Sampige Road- Peenya in Reach 3 and 3A, which could not be deployed on Saturday due to technical snags, were activated on Sunday.
Of the 10 stations, only the scanners at the Sandal Soap Factory station are yet to be activated, said sources.
On Saturday, the first day of operations for Reach 3 and 3A, passengers carrying their baggage were not screened before being let into the stations.
