NEW DELHI (Metro Rail News): Nearly three months after it was opened to the public after a five-month hiatus, Delhi Metro has managed to reach nearly a quarter of its pre-Covid daily footfall of 6 million.
On November 30, as many as 1.3-million riders travelled via the mass rapid transit network. This may be a sign of significant improvement from the date of resumption of services, but it is just 22 per cent of the 6-million average daily ridership of Delhi Metro before the lockdown restrictions were imposed in March this year.
While the ridership has seen a consistent increase since the services resumed on September 7, it is yet to touch the average daily ridership of the pre-Covid era.
Delhi Metro services resumed as part of the Union government’s Unlock 4.0 guidelines. The resumption started with the graded opening of some Metro lines. Other lines were made operational in phases before the entire network of 400 km was thrown open on September 12.
Many shifted to the Metro for their daily commute since they were either relying on bus service or ride-hailing aggregators, besides private modes of transportation.
The first few hours of the service resumption saw barely 8,300 passengers. But within a week of restarting operations, the ridership went up to 249,884. According to the official Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) data, as many as 619,242 passengers took the Metro daily in the month of September. The average daily ridership touched 1.22 million in October and jumped further to 1.33 million in November.
* With inputs from PTI.
