BENGALURU: With offline classes resuming from January 1, Metro ridership has touched 1.25 lakh daily, mostly due to students availing the service again. Since Metro resumed services on September 7, they have been struggling to see even one lakh riders on a single day.
A S Shankar, Executive Director, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), told The New Indian Express, “With students going for schools and colleges again, we have seen an increase in riders. Also, Green Line of Phase-I (Yelachenahalli-Nagasandra), which usually lags behind the Purple Line in terms of ridership, is almost catching up or even has an slight edge over the Purple Line now.” The surge in ridership came to the fore last week after BMRCL released its data.
“We were only touching a little over one lakh earlier on an average during working days. So, this is a clear indication that the student crowd is contributing to the increase in ridership,” Shankar added. Another Metro official said that the work from home trend had impacted its ridership considerably. They are expected the newly-launched extension of Green Line to boost ridership in the coming days.
Recharge metro card with PayTM now
Shankar also said that one can recharge the Smart Card using PayTM. “We rolled out this feature five days ago and commuters have started using it. There is no need to access the Namma Metro app. PayTM now has an option to recharge metro cards,” he said.