It was a smooth, albeit somewhat delayed, start to Hyderabad Metro Rail’s operations on Blue Line exactly 170 days after they were suspended.
The first few trains had a handful of passengers. The first train started at 7.06 a.m. at Raidurg towards Nagole with thermal screening and sanitising kiosks for passengers.
The social distancing norms were in place with instructions to stand diagonally on the escalator and markings for both seating and standing in the coaches for passenger safety.
The Metro authorities have dispensed with physical frisking which was the norm before the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are sanitising the coaches and the stations with sodium hypochlorite solution every three hours though the SOPs talk about doing it every four hours of operations. Passenger confidence is very important now,” said Shravan, a staffer of HMRL at the Raidurg station. There is no change in the fares being charged.
“We have to get used to this,” said Sunil, patting his bottle of hand-sanitiser.
“It has been five months since I had work. People will have to learn to get on with their life while taking precautions and calculated risks,” said the commuter who travelled between Durgam Cheruvu station and Raidurg in the morning.
However, there were only a limited number of passengers.
A majority of the infotech companies in the Gachibowli area have work-from-home norms. The feeder service is limited to share autorickshaws as the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC)’s city bus operations have not resumed.
The number of passengers stayed low through the day with Panjagutta seeing commuters in single digit. “About 60 passengers got in from this side and 30 exited till now,” said a staffer at the station at 5.14 p.m which used to be the peak time for Metro services on the route.