Nearly 2.5 lakh riders take Delhi Metro till 7.30 pm on Monday

New Delhi, Sep 14: Nearly 2.5 lakh commuters used the services of the Delhi Metro across various corridors till late evening on Monday, the first working day since the resumption of full services post 169-day hiatus due to COVID-19.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on Saturday had gone back to its schedule as it was before the services were suspended on March 22 to contain the spread of infection. "The ridership on Monday till 7:30 PM stood at 2,49,884.

The figures for the three of the main corridors are -- Line-1 or Red Line: 29,394; Line-2 or Yellow Line: 76,266; Line-3 or Blue Line: 67,114 ; and Line 4 or Blue Line branch: 7908," a DMRC official said.

On Airport Line, 4,237 riders used the services on the first working day since the resumption of full services. This corridor was reopened on Saturday. Ridership for other lines were Line-5 or Green Line: 10370; Line-6 or Violet Line: 21354; Line-7 or Pink Line: 15420; Line-8 or Magenta Line: 16349; and Line-9 or Grey Line: 1472, the official said.

The DMRC has been reaching out to commuters through social media to inform them that peak hour services are now available in non-peak hours too.

"Delhi Metro's peak hours are from 8AM - 12 noon and from 4PM - 8PM. To facilitate passengers, a headway of 2 min 45 sec to 6 min will be maintained from 8AM to 8PM. Please stagger your journeys so that adequate social distancing can be maintained in the Metro. #MetroBackOnTrack," it tweeted on Monday.

The Delhi Metro had resumed services on September 7 with curtailed operation of the Yellow Line and Rapid Metro, since the closure of the urban transporter on March 22. The Ministry of Home Affairs had recently issued guidelines allowing the Delhi Metro to resume operations in a graded manner, following which the DMRC had said it would be done in three stages from September 7 to 12 Under stage one, Yellow Line or Line 2 and Rapid Metro were made operational with restricted service hours.

Stage two kicked in from Friday with extended service hours, and stage three came into effect from Saturday onwards with metro services going back to pre-COVID-19 time schedule of 6 am to 11 pm. Over 1.5 lakh people had used the services across the various corridors till 7.30 pm on Saturday, with 2,268 of those having used the Airport Line, a senior DMRC official had earlier said.