Hyderabad (Metro Rail News): The onslaught of the new Omicron model has sent footfalls plunging again, even before the Hyderabad Metro rail could chug back to pre-Covid levels in terms of passenger footfalls. “Prior to the pandemic, the number of daily footfalls for all three metro corridors hovered around 4 lakh.”
After the second wave, footfalls began to rise and peaked at 2 lakh in October of last year, indicating that things were gradually returning to normal. However, it has already dropped to roughly 1.3 lakh per day.
One of the main reasons for the steep decline in footfalls is that most of the offices that had opened up following the second wave have gone back to working from home, either entirely or on a rotation basis. “I used to commute from Hitech City to Ameerpet every day, and the metro has been overcrowded during rush hours for the past few months.” But now, every other day, I travel and find over half of the seats empty, possibly because many offices, including ours, have changed to rotational work from office approach,” said Kiranjyot Kaur, a techie in the Ameerpet region.
Aside from WFH, there’s also the fear of catching the highly transmissible Omicron strain when riding the bus. Despite the fact that the Hyderabad Metro rail administration are making a concerted effort to sanitise the system on a regular basis.
The officials, on the other hand, believe that because it is Sankranthi season, now is not the best time to estimate footfalls and that a clear image will emerge later. However, the fact remains that inadequate patronage is the primary reason why the project for the second phase of the metro has failed to get off the ground.
“There is very little footfall in all three corridors. Daily footfalls had reached 4 lakh in the pre-Covid era, and it was supposed to reach 8 lakh in the next two years, but this has not happened,” claimed an insider.
