Hyderabad Metro resumes services after five months

HYDERABAD: After a gap of more than five months, the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) welcomed passengers on Monday morning.
The Metro, which had suspended its services in March due to Covid-19 lockdown reopened with a series of measures such as limited passengers, ensuring fresh air inside the trains, restricting entry without face masks, thermal scanners and sanitisers among others to enable commuters to adhere to Covid-19 social distancing protocols.
As the Red Line or Corridor One between LB Nagar and Miypur will become functional on Monday with trains every five minutes between 7am and 12noon and 4pm to 9pm, the Hyderabad Metro Rail will ferry only 300 passengers which is one third of its carrying capacity for the three-coach trains, with alternate seating arrangement to ensure social distancing. Stations in containment zones - Gandhi Hospital, Bharat Nagar, Moosapet, Musheerabad and Yousufguda will be closed until further notice.
“Apart from keeping the doors open for more time at stations, fresh air will be pumped to an extent of 75% as against 25%-30% earlier as per the standards prescribed by operation of heating, ventilation and AC (HVAC) standards to improve air circulation,” said HMR MD NVS Reddy.
“All human contact areas such as hand rails in the train, escalator handrails, lift buttons and customer handling points would be disinfected every four hours,” said L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH) managing director and CEO KVB Reddy.