The second day of the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) services saw a total of 26,000 passengers travelling on the two corridors of Red Line - L.B. Nagar to Miyapur, which was opened on Monday, and the Blue Line - Nagole to Raidurg which opened on Tuesday. On the first day there were 19,000 passengers when Corridor 1 was opened after more than five months with new set of COVID-19 safety regulations.

HMR managing director N.V.S. Reddy informed late on Tuesday night that the number of passengers on the Red Line saw a slight decrease at 17,000 whereas the passengers count on the Blue Line was to an extent of 9,000 when the services were run from 7 a.m. to 12 noon and again from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Trips doubled

If the number of trips on the first day had been 120, the trips got doubled to 240 on Tuesday on both corridors with trains running at an average frequency of five minutes. Metro rail authorities had already announced that the frequency could be further increased based on the demand and if more passengers were seen to be arriving for making use of the facility, more services would be run.

However, it did not become necessary for the second successive day and, as had been noticed, the limited number of passengers making use of the service followed the “new normal metro travel” of wearing face mask, getting themselves sanitised before entering the stations and also maintaining physical distance at all levels - on escalators, platforms and inside the coaches too where markings were done.

Mr. Reddy stated that from Wednesday the remaining Corridor II or the Green Line too would be run from Jubilee Bus Station to MGBS, Imlibun. The major difference is that metro trains will be run continuously from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. across all the three routes without any break with the frequency of the trains on Green Line to be more than five minutes depending on the crowd.

Gandhi Hospital and Musheerabad stations on this line would be out of bounds without halt; similarly Bharatnagar and Moosapet on Red Line and Yusufguda on Blue Line had no halts as these areas were in containment zones.