BENGALURU: Reported an average daily increase of 9,894 commuters on its network after IKEA launched its store near Nagasandra Metro Station on June 22. The crowd was unmanageable on Saturday, and this continued into Sunday, with many returning empty-handed.
The Tumakuru Road stretch had traffic bottlenecks, with vehicles waiting for hours on the road and IKEA getting slammed online for crowd management. A top Metro official said BMRCL’s average ridership in four days (up to Saturday) since IKEA’s launch has shot up from 4,68,936 to 4,78,829.
Another official said Nagasandra Metro Station has seen a massive surge, as seen in its boarding figures: June 22 - 19,266, June 23 - 17,098, June 24 - 18,515 and June 25 - 30,067. The boarding number the day before the launch was 13,799.
Harsh Goenka, Chairman, RPG Group, tweeted: “It’s not MLAs queuing in Maharashtra to form the government, it’s not an immigration queue to enter our country...it’s not pilgrims queuing in Tirupati for Darshan, it’s the opening of IKEA store in Bangalore!” MD Anjum Parwez said, “BMRCL is increasing the number of ticket counters at Nagasandra Metro Station to 10”. On Saturday, IKEA shut its doors early due to the unprecedented rush.