Chennai Metro Rail’s passenger traffic dwindles

Chennai Metro Rail sees 7% drop in passengers in November, attributing it to MRTS services resuming and lack of last mile connectivity.

Chennai Metro Rail has seen a 7% dip in passengers travelling in November compared to October. From witnessing 90,83,996 passengers in October, the numbers dwindled to 83,61,492 in November.

In the phase I and phase I extension network extending to 54 km of Chennai city, Chennai Metro Rail system now carries about 2.78 lakh passengers a day.

In September and October, Chennai Metro Rail handled an average of 3.09 lakh passengers and 2.93 lakh passengers a day respectively. But the number of commuters plummeted to 2.78 lakh passengers a day in November.

According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), after the suspension of MRTS services between Chintadripet and Chennai Beach, gradually over time, many commuters opted to travel by Chennai Metro Rail system and there was a spike in traffic. But in October 2024, as the infrastructure work taken up by Southern Railways came to an end, the train services resumed.

“Thousands of MRTS commuters used our system for almost a year now and it significantly improved our passenger traffic. But now that services between Velachery and Chennai Beach are entirely operational, we believe many commuters have gone back to using it. We think this is likely to be one of the primary reasons for the fall in passenger traffic. There were also holidays for schools and colleges due to rains,” an official said.

It is to be noted that though CMRL is inching closer to completing a decade of operating train services, they still don’t have well established last mile connectivity vehicles which can shuttle between stations and their neighbouring areas for the entire network. Except for a brief period between when share cars were running in many stations, CMRL has not set up a full-fledged last mile connectivity system for commuters.

“Right now, the majority of the commuters come by two-wheelers. But for those who don’t have a car or a bike, they have to depend on buses or autos to come to the stations. If there were share cars or share auto exclusively operating from stations, many new commuters will start to travel by Chennai Metro Rail,” he added.