Marginal increase in footfall on day two of resumption of Delhi Metro services

NEW DELHI: The first day of resumption of Delhi Metro services in a truncated manner witnessed largely deserted stations and trains as commuters preferred to wait and watch on Monday. Tuesday saw a marginal increase in footfalls in the morning hour.

On Tuesday, approximately 8,300 travelled by the Yellow Line between 7 am and 11 am. On Monday, total 7,500 passengers had travelled by the corridor during the same period.On Monday, Rapid Metro in Gurgaon and Yellow Line together ferried a total 15,500 passengers including the evening period of 4 pm to 8 pm.
DMRC expects the footfalls to increase gradually as more corridors are opened and operational time is expanded. On Wednesday, Delhi Metro’s busiest corridor Blue Line (Dwarka-Noida/Vaishali), which connects west Delhi to east, apart the Pink Line (Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar), which forms an arc around the capital will become operational.
On Thursday, Delhi Metro’s oldest corridor Red Line (Rithala-Shaheed Sthal), GreenLine (Kirti Nagar/Inderlok-Bahadurgarh) and Violet Line (Kashmere Gate-Ballabgarh) would open. The service timings would remain from 7 am to 11 am and 4 pm to 8 pm.
Friday onwards, Delhi Metro’s service timings would be expanded to 7 am to 1 pm and 4 pm to 10 pm and the Magenta Line (Janakpuri West-Botanical Garden) and Grey Line (Dwarka-Najafgarh) will also become operational. From Saturday, DMRC would resume full services from 6 am to 11 pm and the standalone Airport Express Line would also become operational.
At stations, DMRC has arranged for sanitization booths at multiple spots, right from the entrance to the time when one enters the metro, where all the seats are sanitized thoroughly after short intervals. Thermal screening and hand sanitisation of all passengers is being carried out at entry and frisking points. Baggage carried by passengers are sanitized near entry gates, before these were put in the baggage x-ray machine.
On Monday a few passengers were found to be unaware that tokens are not being issued anymore and bought smart cards and total 1,115 smart cards were sold at different metro stations.