BENGALURU: On a working day, a maximum of 35,000 commuters travel in Metro trains between 9 am and 10 am. The second highest occupancy figure of 33,000 has been observed in the peak hour between 6 pm and 7 pm. These are figures computed for both the Purple and Green Lines.
“An hour-by-hour analysis of the travelling pattern of Metro commuters was done on Tuesday (August 29). This is the first time BMRCL is conducting such a study after the launch of the full Phase-I,” said Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) Managing Director Pradeep Singh Kharola.
“Managing peak hour traffic in Metro is a huge challenge and this study is an effort towards an indepth understanding of the passenger traffic. This analysis can be taken as a representation of any working day,” Kharola said. A similar study to understand weekend travelling pattern would be done later.
According to a top Metro official, 3,28, 410 commuters travelled by Metro on the day of analysis. While 1,88,432 travelled by the Purple Line (Baiyappanahalli to Mysore Road), 1,39,978 took the Green Line (Yelachenahalli to Nagasandra). It is interesting to watch the travel curve which begins at below 500 when Metro gates open their doors and the pilot trains are run. The traffic hits its peak between 9 and 10 am. Between 12 noon and 3 pm, the figure constantly hovers around 15,000 for the three consecutive hours. It then goes up and touches an evening high between 6 pm and 7 pm and then the slide begins. Even the last trains have an occupany of nearly 1,000 passengers.
Asked about the station-wise break up, an official said that Kempe Gowda Metro station being the interchange gets the maximum crowd followed by Baiyappanahalli Metro station.
Questioned about what Metro proposes to do with this analysis, a top official said that this would help BMRCL start new initiatives to manage the peak hours. “Discussions on management of commuter traffic are going on right now and details cannot be shared,” he added. The entire Phase-I averages at 3.25 lakh ridership per day.
