BENGALURU: Metro commuters continue to demand a rollback of the steep increase in fare with countless individuals reiterating the hike has not shot up by an average of 46% but almost or more than double the fare.
Meanwhile, Metro officials are also clueless as to what was going wrong with the high fares being charged for different trips as they reiterate that the maximum hike cannot overshoot 50 percent.
Internal analysis revealed that the casual slotting of stations in different slabs by rounding off kilometres in the past was the reason for the present chaos. A source revealed, “The fare fixation committee has slotted the slabs with even a 0.1 km taken into consideration. For instance, in the past, a station with 10.2 km was placed in the 10 km slab.
Now it falls in the next slab. Hence, in addition to the hike introduced, those commuting to this station will have an added hike as it moves up the slab structure. What we have done now is actually the accurate slab in which it needs to be slotted.”
Another official said, “When we launched Metro in 2011, there were few stations to reckon with. So under the Metro Act, BMRCL fixed the fare based on the addition of stations. It was only in 2017 after the launch of Phase-I that we created the km-based fare structure.”
This reporter travelled from Cubbon Park Metro station to Swami Vivekananda Metro station on Monday and the fare came to Rs 36. The previous fare was just Rs 19. A senior Metro official said there is some error as the revised fare needs to be Rs 30 only!
BMRCL MD Maheshwar Rao said, “We are trying to analyse what is happening. It will take us a couple of days to understand the right picture.” He also said BMRCL would have a rethink on the discount removed on the purchase of QR tickets due to public demand.
The Metro network suffered a ridership dip of 42,000 on the first working day of Monday (February 10) after the fare hike was introduced. A comparative analysis of the ridership on all Mondays in 2025 reveals that this is the lowest ridership for a Monday barring Jan 13 when it was Makara Sankranti.
The ridership on Tuesday was 7,78,774. Ridership during the previous Tuesday (Feb 4) was 8,58,417. Loss in patronage is 79,643 riders.
REDUCE HIKE: CONG MLA
Karnataka Mahila Congress president and former MLA Soumya Reddy and KPCC General Secretary met BMRCL MD and submitted a plea calling for a reduction in the steep Metro fare hike. The plea said, “A public consultation needs to be carried out first.” The memo also charged that the BJP was spreading lies that the Centre had asked the state to reduce the hike being effected but it was refusing to do it.
No. of pax on mondays this year
Jan 6: 8,61,593
Jan 13: 7,84,539
Jan 20: 8,79,537
Jan 27: 9,09,756
Feb 3: 8,70,147
Feb 10: 8,28,149