HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metro Rail services will be extended from October 10. The last service will now leave the originating station at 11 pm. Currently, the last service leaves at 10.45 pm.
N.V.S. Reddy, HMRL managing director, said on Twitter: “Happy to announce that the service hours of Hyderabad Metro Rail are being extended with effect from 10 October 2022 (Monday). The last train will leave at 11 pm from the respective terminal stations while starting the daily services at the usual 6 am (sic).”
The decision to extend the timing comes just about a month after the Metro Rail registered its highest footfall after the Covid-19 pandemic on September 9, during the immersion of Ganesh idols. On the day, over 4 lakh passengers availed the service. The average daily ridership is currently about 3.78 lakh, while it was over 4 lakh before the pandemic. “Traffic is almost back to pre-Covid levels,” added HMRL officials.
N.V.S Reddy said that the trains in the extended duration will run at a frequency of 10 minutes. He said peak hour services had been increased and running at optimum levels. He said there were 1,050 train trips a day over the entire network and this would further increase to about 1075 with the extended duration.
He said ever since employees had been asked to come back to offices, the footfall had substantially gone up, leading to a demand for increased frequency of trains.
He added, currently, the Hyderabad Metro Rail is recovering steadily and in the last few months, HMRL is witnessing about 3 lakh passengers daily. The passenger ridership is high during office hours in the morning and evening.
With ridership nearly touching pre-Covid-19 levels, passengers who are forced to travel in jampacked Metro Rail trains have demanded the addition of more coaches.
K. Harsh, a Metro Rail user, said that it was high time for Hyderabad Metro Rail to add coaches at least during the peak hours.
A Metro Rail user raised questions on the condition of service roads. Karthik Palvai asked the HMRL about the service road at the Victory Memorial Metro Rail station. “We have requested multiple times but yet no action taken by the management. The road is in the worst condition,” he said.
Deccan Chronicle asked HMRL managing director N.V.S. Reddy on the same, to which he replied that the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) had dug the road to change a sewer line. “The work is getting completed and we will restore the service road in about 15 days. I have asked my engineers to immediately float tenders and take up the restoration work,” he said.
Metro Rail users also asked about the extension of the service to the Old City, five after the service began. Manohar Valeem compared HMRL to Bengaluru, where many phases were being built simultaneously to cover different parts of the city.
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