Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Bhopal metro is helplessly witnessing a sharp decline in the footfall of passengers every week. The train has three coaches and the ridership capacity of each is 250, which means around 750 passengers can travel in each trip.
However, the total ridership in a day is around 200 passengers.
Notably, the metro train runs 14 times in a day. If the average footfall is calculated at 200 to 250 per day, then in every trip, there are merely 40 to 50 passengers from Subhash Nagar station to AIIMS station. In other words, it runs almost empty in every trip.
A metro management official said that on January 30, only 188 people travelled in the metro. On January 29, 203 people used it and on January 31, 246 people travelled in the metro.
These figures are ample illustration that the metro is running with very little occupancy. Notably, its highest passenger footfall of 6568 was registered only once since its launch. After that, the number of passengers continued to fall drastically and now the figure is hovering around 200 or a little more.
Madhya Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation managing director S Krishna Chaitanya told the Free Press that decline in ridership was natural. Things would remain the same as long as daily commuters did not use the metro. The ridership would increase when frequency of train was increased.
Increasing the frequency would be considered after the completion of signal work, which is likely to be over in April.
Automatic fare collection to start this month
The metro management is planning to start the automatic ticketing system for passengers from this month itself. The hardware for installation of AFC system has already arrived. The first AFC system will be started in Bhopal and later on at Indore metro stations.
Currently, manual tickets are being given to the people travelling in the metro trains of both the cities.
