CHENNAI: Witnessing the highest ridership till date, the Chennai Metro Rail recorded four lakh passenger footfall on October 6, on the day the Indian Air Force's air show was held at the Marina Beach.
With around 15 lakh people gathered at the beach to watch the show, the public transportation was largely inadequate. Chaos prevailed among people to catch a quick ride to reach the venue on Sunday morning, and panic to return to their homes safely.
However, the huge inflow of passengers at Government Estate Metro station on Sunday forced the staff to open the Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) gates. And, the CMRL that took account of the ridership announced that 4,00,042 people had ridden the Metro on Sunday. Apparently, this is the highest daily ridership recorded by CMRL so far.
But, for crowd management, CMRL operated trains every 3.5 minutes at 2 pm on Sunday and deployed more than 100 CMRL staff, security, pink squad and police personnel at the Estate Metro.