Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Government on Wednesday decided to allow metro trains in Mumbai to operate from October 15 in a phased manner under its 'Mission Begin Again' initiative.
Mumbai Metro thanked the Government and said they "have already initiated safety inspections and trial runs". They also said that the passenger operations will restart from 8:30 am on October 19.
BL Soni/ FPJ
BL Soni/ FPJ
BL Soni/ FPJ
BL Soni/ FPJ
The trips will be at a time gap of 6.30 minutes in peak hours (which was 3 minutes before COVID-19) and 8 minutes in non-peak hours. Everyday, about 204 trips will be made between 8:30 am and 8:30 pm. Eventually, the number of trips will be increased, depending on the passengers' response, said MMOPL.
Interestingly, at Metro One ticket counters, commuters will no longer get plastic token tickets, instead they will be encouraged to opt for paper tickets or QR tickets. Besides, it is expecting to implement the one nation, one card in the next three months.
At present, MMOPL has 16 rakes, of which two rakes will be kept on the standby mode for emergency, if any. Since the commencement of Mumbai Metro One services, 600 million passengers travelled and zero accidents were recorded.
Meanwhile, services on the 20-km monorail line in the financial capital resumed on Sunday, after nearly seven months of closure following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The single line, which had been struggling with ridership numbers before the pandemic as well, witnessed low patronage which can also be attributed to it being a weekend.
Services on the line, which extends from Chembur to Lacob Circle at Mahalaxmi, were carried out in two phases - one each in the morning and evening bands with additional COVID-19 related precautions like social distancing and regular cleaning.
Maharashtra reported a single-day rise of 9,060 coronavirus positive cases on Sunday, taking the state's COVID 19 tally to 15,95,381, the health department said. The death of 150 patients due to the pandemic pushed the toll further to 42,115, it said in a statement. As many as 11,204 patients were discharged during the day. With this, the state's recovery count went up to 13,69,810.
