Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Metro Rail would complete a year of commercial operations on Wednesday, since its inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 28 last year. Within this year, the Metro has become the second largest line in the country.
Due to the model code of conduct in force, L&T HMRL will confine the celebrations to decorating some of the stations selectively. Even though the operations were started in November, L&T has become positive about the operations and footfalls only after the opening up of the LB Nagar Line.
The average number of passengers using the metro has also more than doubled from 80,000 to about 2 lakh per day after the inaugural of the LB Nagar to Ameerpet corridor with the number of people travelling during holidays increasing exponentially. With the opening of Hitec City line, L&T HMRL is expecting a total patronage of 3 lakh. While the patronage is still lagging behind Delhi (28 lakh per day), Kolkata (5.5 lakh) and Bengaluru (4.2 lakh), HMR said that the level of acceptance of the metro in Hyderabad is way better as the initial patronage was not very high for all other metros.
HMR MD N.V.S. Reddy said, “Compared to other metros, our initial ridership was way higher but the potential is much more, especially when you connect all the corridors. Secondly because of the railings and street level works, we have reduced the street level congestion as witnessed across all other metros in other cities.”
While officials are certain about the inaugural of Hitec City Metro in December, the work relating to train reversal at Hitec City is still in progress and the Metro cannot commence operations without CMRS certification.
Meanwhile, the street level work on the existing corridors are still in progress, especially the newly inaugurated LB Nagar to Ameerpet line and remain inaccessible to commuters.
“We will be completing the work at station areas which is around 200 meters by December and and the remaining 700 meters of street level work will be completed by February,” Mr Reddy said.
Meanwhile, the last mile connectivity continues to be a problem which HMRL is working on along with other government agencies and hopes to come out with a concrete plan. “We are working on addressing the last mile connectivity issues which is a major problem and involves various stakeholders and is time consuming,” he said.
