A record four lakh passengers clambered onto the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) trains despite being a general holiday on the Ganesh idols’ final immersion day when the services were extended for the first time till 2 a.m. of early hours of Saturday.
Khairatabad metro station, because of its access to the big Ganesh idol in the vicinity and the Necklace Road, was quite obviously the much popular station with 22,490 riders using it on the Red Line or Corridor 1 – Miyapur to L.B. Nagar route. In fact, one side of the station had to be closed on police advice to prevent people crisscrossing and disrupting the heavy traffic flow.
There was a surge of crowd at the station for about 10 minutes at 8 p.m. otherwise, the public had cooperated well, and by and large no incident of any kind of misbehaviour was experienced despite the late hours, said HMR Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy.
No other station had experienced such kind of high footfalls and if the usual number of passengers is about 15,000 tp 20,000 per hour daily on normal days, during the extended hours late into the Friday night, the passenger count came down to 7,000 to 8,000 an hour, mostly across the major two corridors, he explained.
The Red Line had about 2.47 lakh passengers altogether with the rush stations apart from Khairatabad, with L.B. Nagar having footfall of 22,063 passengers, KPHB Colony 19,762, Miyapur 18,579 and Ameerpet interchange station 12,642 passengers.
The Blue Line or Corridor III from Nagole to Raidurg had the next highest number of riders of about 1.50 lakh with the rush stations being Raidurg with footfalls of 19,470 passengers, Uppal 10,990, Ameerpet inter-change station 11,858, Secunderabad West 9,335 and Durgan Cheruvu 9,316 passengers. The Green Line or Corridor II saw 22,304 riders with major rush stations being Secunderabad West with footfall of 3,742 passengers, Narayanaguda 3,100, RTC Crossroads 4,605 and JBS 2,350 passengers.
The successful running and public patronage for the metro trains in late hours do not mean it is going to be a regular affair. Mr. Reddy does not forsee any such need considering the “passenger footfalls and other operational issues”.
“Last time we ran trains till 1.30 a.m. Running trains late involves additional working hours for staff — ticketing, security and train operators. We also need to consider that trains need maintenance work which can be done only after the services stop. Once a while we can run trains during extended hours,” said the MD.
