MUMBAI: As petrol and diesel prices keep rising and pinching the pocket, there is good news for people who make the west-east journey on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar corridor by road: Monday will bring an addition of 70,000 persons to the daily carrying capacity on the Metro.
The Reliance-Infrastructure-promoted
Mumbai Metro One on Thursday announced 44 additional trips in the off-peak hours from Monday, which will eventually reduce the waiting period to five minutes from eight minutes during these hours. During peak hours, the waiting period would be three minutes.
The move to increase the services with the help of 14 rakes takes the tally of Metro services up from 396 to 440 on weekdays.
The Metro initiated trial runs of the new services from Wednesday.
“As of now average 4 lakh commuters are travelling on the corridor on weekdays,” a source in Metro One said. “The decision will prompt another chunk of about 70,000 commuters to travel on the 12 km route. Since it is the rare east-west connectivity, a larger number of rail commuters switch over their modes by using this line.”
Mumbai Metro One began operations in June 2013. In 2017-18, it operated around 1.3 lakh train trips.
Over the last year, Metro One increased train services from 370 to 382 and then to 396 on weekdays. It also improvised station layout, ticketing counters, AFC gates, baggage scanning machines and security facilities.
Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (MMOPL) is a consortium formed by
Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, MMRDA and Veolia Transport SA of France with 69%, 26% and 5% stake, respectively.
The 11.4 km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar corridor has been awarded to MMOPL for a concession period of 35 years.
The corridor has 12 stations and has reduced the travelling time of Mumbaikars from 90 minutes to 21 minutes.
