HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMRL) has announced discounts and offers for its commuters ahead of the Bathukamma festivities. Starting Saturday, commuters can avail a flat 40 per cent discount on every Metro ride made using the Smart Card, paper ticket or digital QR code till October 31.
In another offer, which the HMRL rolled out on Friday exclusively for Smart Card users, they can make 20 trips by paying only for 14. Similarly, the card users can pay for 20 trips and make 30 trips, pay for 40 and get 60.
One more offer would be launched on November 1, wherein commuters will receive a 50 per cent cashback on recharging the Metro Store Value Card for Rs 500 to Rs 1,800. The cashback would be valid for 75 days. On the same day, HMRL would offer free trips to those booking tickets on its T-Savari app. On selecting to purchase 10 trips, one would pay only for seven. Similarly, one can get 20 trips by paying for 14, 30 trips for 20, 45 trips for 30 and 60 trips for 40.
Meanwhile, HMRL MD NVS Reddy, at a press conference, was asked about the rainwater spilling onto the roads from the Metro pillars during the recent deluge. To this he said it was not easy to let the rainwater run off directly onto the ground as it would destabilise the Metro’s foundation. “We have 200 water-harvesting structures on the Metro corridors.
Maximum water goes into these injection borewells. I read a lot of messages on Twitter about people saying that the water could have been injected into the ground directly. Had I done that the foundation would have been disturbed. Our Metro pillars carry 2,400 tonnes of weight and different kinds of stress,” he said.
He highlighted the Moosapet incident, wherein a road caved in near a Metro pillar. “In Moosapet, the water was eroding the ground from underneath. If we had allowed the rainwater to go straight into the ground, it would have caused further damage,” he said.