File photo of Noida Metro NOIDA: Noida Metro’s Aqua Line on Monday recorded a ridership of 40,295 — the highest since it commenced operations on January 25, 2019. The second highest ridership, so far, was 39,451, recorded on September 19, 2019, during the auto-rickshaw strike in the city. The third highest ridership was 32,923 on February 8, 2020, during the Auto Expo in Greater Noida. Noida Metro Rail Corporation’s (NMRC) said that it had been witnessing an upward trend for the past few months. This year, it recorded the average ridership of 13,124 in January, 18,482 in February, 23,266 in March, 26,162 in April, 29,089 in May, 30,366 in June, and 32,202 in July. Nisha Wadhawan, NMRC spokesperson, said, “The ridership of 40,295 is the highest to date. The second highest ridership was recorded in 2019 when the auto unions had called a strike and a number of people used the Aqua Line.” She attributed the rise in ridership to the resumption of offices and academic institutions in Noida and Greater Noida. “The metro services were affected during the Covid lockdown for several months. The Aqua Line resumed operations on June 9, 2021, and the ridership slowly increased since then,” Wadhawan said. She said the NMRC is also taking various measures to provide better services to commuters. NMRC recently floated an expression of interest for the city bus service for last-mile connectivity, and the last date for submission of applications is August 18. In this initiative, NMRC aims to engage private operators with a minimum of 25 AC buses with 24-seater capacity. The engagement of buses this time will be on public-private-partnership (PPP) model, in which the operators will earn through fare box revenue and non-fare box revenue. NMRC will not pay any money to the operators. The buses will run on nine routes covering sectors 50, 51 and 76, and societies like Stellar One, Arihant Arden, Stellar Jeevan, ACE City and Gaur City, as well as NSEZ, Knowledge Park and Pari Chowk. The Noida Authority, on the other hand, is planning to soon issue a tender for a foot bridge between Aqua Line’s Sector-51 station and Blue Line’s Sector-52 station. FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebookTwitterInstagramKOO APPYOUTUBE
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/noida-metro-sees-its-highest-ridership-scales-40k-mark/articleshow/93466413.cms
