Chennai Metro Rail ridership stagnates, registers a daily average of 3 lakh over past two months

The number of persons travelling by Metro Rail has been rather stagnant for the past two months, registering an average of 3 lakh passengers a day. In October and November, it saw an average of 3 lakh and 3.09 lakh passengers a day respectively.

In August, the network witnessed a total of 99.09 lakh passengers, which grew by 2.3% to 1.01 crore passengers in September. But the ridership dropped by nearly 8% to 93.27 lakh in October. In November again, the total number of passengers fell marginally by 0.4% to 92.86 lakh when compared to the previous month.

According to Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) officials, they have been making continued and sustained efforts to pull more people into travelling by this mass rapid transit system. In the last two months, there was only a slight dip in ridership. “During October, there were quite a lot of holidays and many people left town. In November, we understand, there were exam holidays for college students, and since they form a sizable part of our travellers, we saw a small drop in ridership,” an official said.

To improve feeder services, CMRL had asked the Metropolitan Transport Corporation to run mini buses. “The MTC has commenced work for this project and soon, 11 stations in the Phase I network will have last-mile connectivity. Once this is implemented, we are sure to see a good spike in the number of people travelling in our system,” he said.

Increasing the frequency of trains during peak hours and starting last-mile connectivity services such as mini buses at all stations are key for enhancing ridership, commuters said. Dayanand Krishnan, a frequent Metro Rail passenger, said the demand was high during peak hours, and the trains were packed to capacity. “The coaches are overcrowded to the point where we sometimes feel suffocated. Women will find it even more difficult. People are paying high fares for travel on Metro Rail for the comfort, but this doesn’t seem to exist during peak hours. CMRL needs to expedite its plan to procure additional trains and enhance the frequency,” he said.

Mr. Krishnan added that it had been 10 years since Metro Rail began operations, and CMRL still lacked a well-established feeder system to pick up and drop people from localities near the stations.