With thousands of passengers travelling out of the city to their native places to celebrate Deepavali, Chennai Metro has extended train services till midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to a CMRL release, the evening peak hour service with 5-minute headway from 5 pm to 8 pm has been extended till 10 pm. In addition, Metro Train services have been extended from 11 pm to 12 midnight with 15-minute headway. The Metro Train extension is for November 2 and 3 only.

A CMRL official said that with a large number of people leaving to their hometowns given the Deepavali holidays, they would take the metro trains to reach Central and Egmore Railway stations, CMBT bus terminus and airport without getting stuck in the traffic snarl.

Meanwhile, CMRL on Monday said that ever since the Metro resumed service on June 21, after COVID second wave, the number of passengers taking metro trains have gone up every month. In July, the monthly passengers’ patronage stood at 18.46 lakh while it increased to 22.74 lakh in August. Nearly 29.7 lakh passengers utilised the train services in October as against 26.86 lakh passengers in September. Though this is a marked increase, the daily average has not touched pre-COVID levels of 1.16 lakh.

However, a maximum of 1.17 lakh passengers used the train to commute on October 13. In October, a total of 44,716 passengers have utilised the QR code ticketing system, while 15,94 lakh passengers have used the travel card ticketing system.