India / Over 53,000 passengers on Delhi Metro on 3rd day after services resume

New Delhi: After Delhi Metro resumed services in a graded manner from Monday onwards, thr overall ridership on yellow, pink and blue lines was nearly 53,400 on Wednesday, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation said.

The surge in number of passengers using the services today came in the backdrop of DMRC resuming its Blue and Pink routes of the trains today after a 171-day hiatus owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in the country.

Trains operated in batches of four-hour each from 7-11 AM in the morning and 4-8 PM in the evening in the first stage.

The approximate figures for the three corridors are -- Yellow Line (26,900), Blue Line (22,600) and Pink Line (3,900), it said.

However, it is clarified that actual utilisation of a metro system is reflected from the number of journeys performed by a passenger in completing his or her journey by using one or more lines (line utilisation) and not by ridership alone, it said.

"Revenue, ridership not on mind. Out aim is to connect people," DMRC chief Mangu Singh told news agency PTI on resumption of metro services.

"Transport demand will not decrease in post-COVID scenario, ultimately people will come back to metro", he added.

The reopening of these two lines will ensure availability of nine of the existing 28 interchange Metro stations from Wednesday, including Rajouri Garden (Blue Line & Pink Like); INA Delhi Haat (Yellow & Pink Line); Mayur Vihar Phase – I (Blue Line & Pink Line); Rajiv Chowk (Blue Line & Yellow Line); Anand Vihar ISBT (Blue Line & Pink Line) and Sikanderpur (Yellow Line & Rapid Metro), the DMRC said earlier.

On Monday, the Delhi Metro had resumed services on its Yellow Line, with curtailed operations and a slew of measures for safety of passengers and employees.

Operations in the first four hours from 7 am to 11 am was smooth with approximately 7,500 passengers availing themselves of the service, said DMRC.

Metro services in Delhi-NCR were closed since March 22 due to the pandemic.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had recently issued guidelines allowing the Delhi Metro to resume operations in a graded manner, following which the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had said it would be done in three stages from September 7-12.

In addition to Yellow, Blue and Pink lines, three more lines --- Red Line (Rithala to Shaheed Sthal New Bus Adda (Ghaziabad); Green Line (Kirti Nagar/Inderlok to Brig. Hosihar Singh (Bahadurgarh); and Violet Line (Kashmere Gate to Raja Nahar Singh (Ballabhgarh) -- will also resume services from September 10 with the same time schedule.

Meanwhile, Delhi on Wednesday reported the highest single-day spike in new Covid-19 cases so far, after 4,039 more patients tested positive for the novel coronavirus infection in the past 24 hours, according to daily health bulletin.

With this, the national capital's caseload has breached 2 lakh-mark to reach 2,01,174, it added.

Along with that, the death toll has also increased to 4,638 as 20 more virus-related fatalities were reported in Delhi on Wednesday.

There are currently 1,72,763 patients who have recovered/discharged/migrated so far including 2,623 patients today.