Multiple holidays in 4 months dampen Chennai Metro Rail ridership

CHENNAI: Citing reasons from holidays due to rain and festivals, the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) witnessed a dip in passenger ridership in November – 83.61 lakh had travelled on the Metro. Also, it’s to be noted that the CMRL had been witnessing a decline in ridership consecutively for the past four months.

As per CMRL press note, the ridership in August was 95.43 lakh. The footfall in September was 92.77 lakh, followed by 90.83 lakh in October. Though the overall passenger ridership for November was 83.61 lakh, the highest single day passenger flow was recorded on November 6 with 3.35 lakh passengers.

Further, in November, 27.50 lakh passengers used travel card, 599 used token, 6,208 used group ticketing, 1.57 lakh used online QR, 18.40 lakh used paper QR, 2.24 lakh used static QR, 5.40 lakh used WhatsApp, 3.90 lakh used PayTM, 2.99 lakh used PhonePe, 1.10 lakh used Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and 20.42 lakh used Singara Chennai card.

Commenting about the decline in ridership specifically from October-November, a CMRL official said, “Due to multiple holidays and rain, the passenger flow had dipped. Though the average daily ridership remains constant over 3.10 lakh, we’ll observe if it surges in coming months.”