A month into the resumption of commercial services, the Metro passenger count is inching towards what the authorities had geared up for.
The passenger count on Monday was 77,565. The count was over 71,000 on Friday, too. The weekend saw around 56,000 passengers on Saturday and around 19,000 on Sunday.
When service had resumed for all on September 14, Metro officials had said they were prepared for 100,000 passengers. The number of trains for the first few days was 110. The number of passengers for the first few days was under 30,000. It crossed 50,000 on September 25.
The number has since gone up to 146 trains daily from Monday to Saturday.
Before the services were suspended because of the pandemic, the carrier used to run 288 trains every weekday and the passenger count was more than 600,000 daily.
The difference between the number of e-passes booked and actual trips made has not dropped the way it was expected to. An e-pass needs to be booked to enter a station and a smart card is needed to enter the platform.
“Over 200,000 e-passes were booked on Monday. The conversion rate (of trips made from e-passes booked) is a little over 65 per cent. That is how it has been for around two weeks now,” a representative of the agency that designed the e-pass system said.
The interval between two trains is around eight minutes in the morning and evening rush hour. The other intervals are 10 and 15 minutes.
The last trains now leave the terminal stations at 8.30pm. Metro officials believe the count will go past 100,000 once the timings are extended further.