Nagpur: With the gradual opening up of society, ridership of Nagpur Metro has increased significantly over the past few months. In October and early November, the average ridership on weekdays was just over 3,000. In January it is well over 10,000.
Ridership is significantly higher on Sundays than weekdays. This implies that a large number of people are still boarding the Metro for joyrides. In the last few Sundays, ridership is over 20,000.
A MahaMetro spokesperson, however, said that a regular ridership of over 10,000 on weekdays showed that a large number of people were using the Metro for genuine travel and not joyrides.
A MahaMetro spokesperson said that several measures were being taken to increase ridership. "We went to industries in MIDCs of Butibori and Hingna and urged the employees to use the Metro. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) runs feeder buses from Khapri and Lokmanya Nagar stations. The response from employees as well as employers was very positive," he added.
"There are many colleges on Hingna Road but they are closed. While students are studying through online classes, the teachers have to report to work. We have urged them to use the Metro," said the spokesperson.
The agency has launched a campaign to promote the common mobility card — Mahacard all over the city.
MahaMetro has taken several innovative steps to up the figure. These include renting the train for birthdays, allowing bicycle riders to take their machines in the trains, making it a hangout joint for senior citizens, providing free feeder service at Nagpur airport etc.
Under its ‘Celebrations on Wheels’ scheme, a person can book the train for birthdays, pre-wedding shoots, marriage anniversaries etc for one hour by paying Rs3,000.
"We have allowed bicycle riders to carry their machines in the train. We are not charging anything for the bicycles," said the spokesperson.
With ridership of Nagpur Metro crossing pre-Covid levels, MahaMetro has been able to rake in money through leasing commercial spaces in its stations, wrapping its trains with advertisements, permitting use of the space below its viaduct for advertising, co-branding of Metro stations etc.
Other than this, non-ticket revenue is coming from transit-oriented development (TOD), royalty on automatic fare collection (AFC) system etc.
BACK IN BUSINESS
DATE----------------------RIDERSHIP
Jan 3--------------------------21,741
Jan 4--------------------------12,677
Jan 5-----------------------11,471
Jan 6-----------------------13,622
Jan 7------------------------8,390
Jan 8------------------------12,606
Jan 9------------------------13,250