In the last three months, 31.5 lakh people have travelled through Chennai Metro Rail. These trains used to take more than 30 lakh passengers a month before COVID-19 struck and the passenger traffic came spiralling down, with the majority of the workforce still continuing to work from home.
But the number of people travelling has been consistently increasing month on month. In December, 12.3 lakh people travelled, a 43 percent increase when compared to 8.58 lakh in November, according to a press release. On 21 December, 47,214 passengers took these trains, the highest number recorded in a day that month. But this is not even half of what Chennai Metro Rail would witness early last year, with nearly 1.2 lakh people using the system each day.
“We don’t see the IT sector getting back to office. They were our predominant travellers. But thankfully, we do see a good improvement in the ridership every month; in about six months, we should be able to touch a lakh,” an official said.
In September and October, 3.6 lakh and 7.03 lakh passengers took Chennai Metro Rail trains, the release said.
“A total of 83,813 passengers have utilised the recently launched QR code ticketing system from September 2020 to December 2020 and 18,49,944 passengers have used Travel Card Ticketing System from September 2020 to December 2020,” the release said.
