BENGALURU: Regular commuters faced a nightmarish situation as Metro trains and stations were swamped from early Monday morning till afternoon by the holiday crowd returning to the city after the Deepavali break. Right from the first service at 5 am till noon, there were massive queues stretching onto the streets at eight stations in the vicinity of a railway station or inter-city bus station.
Officials were forced to leave the ticketed gates at the stations open for a few hours to facilitate quicker passage for commuters.
Kempegowda Interchange Metro station, Nagasandra, Yeshwanthpur, Bennigannahalli, Dasarahalli, Bengaluru City station, Krishnarajapura and Baiyappanahalli burst at the seams, reporting a 30% to 50% surge in ridership.
H Raghavendra, an accountant at a private firm, who boards a Metro train daily at Nagasandra to commute to work, told TNIE, “I regularly take the Metro up to Gorguntapalya and then take a bus to my workspot at Hebbal. Around 8.15 am on Monday, the queue to enter the station stretched onto the road.
I realised that it would take very long to enter the station and so took a bus from Nagasandra. I reached my office only at 11 am instead of the regular time of 9.45 am by Metro as even the road was jampacked.” Lamenting the non-opening of the Green Line extension, he added, “If only the stretch between Madavara and Nagasandra had been launched, so many of us would not have suffered today.”
Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) officials faced public ire for being completely unprepared for the scenario. Despite the huge rush, stations were operating with only one entry point.
Ashwatthama posted this query to BMRCL on X: “Why were all entry gates closed and only one gate open in Majestic? This led to a big queue outside that gate even when I didn’t have any luggage I had to stand in the queue for over 15 minutes.” “This is a normal practice in the early morning hours,” said an official.
A Metro source said, “We posted more security personnel to carry out manual frisking also and clear the rush. More officials too were deployed to handle the situation in the concourse and platform areas of stations.”
Another source said, “Since most people were returning with luggage after a four-day break, screening took much time. Due to the surging crowd, we left the automatic fare collection gate open for people to pass through quickly at a few stations. Public had to swipe at the exit points alone.”
A senior BMRCL official shared data on the overwhelming patronage up to Monday afternoon (5 am to 1 pm): Kempegowda: 22,852 riders; Nagasandra: 18,824; Yeshwanthpur: 16,226; Benniganahalli: 16,088; Dasarahalli: 12,183; KSR City Station: 11,770; Krishnarajapura: 10,487 and Baiyappanahalli: 9,488.