New Delhi (Metro Rail News): A Parliamentary Standing Committee has observed that most of the metro in the country which are operating are not able to generate revenues due to the low ridership. the committee has come to the conclusion that it is due to faulty DPRs, lack of proper planning to provide first and last mile connectivity and a few other reasons.
Other than Delhi and Mumbai Line 1, most of the operational metros in the country including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Chennai, Kolkata and Kochi have lower ridership.
Bengaluru Metro had Actual Average Daily Ridership (AADR) of 1.48, 3.40, 4.52, 4.89 and 0.96 lakhs only in 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, respectively, against Average Daily Ridership required for breakeven of 7.65, 10.09, 12.32, 13.19 and 18.54 lakhs, respectively, in the same years. The Bengaluru metro has been constantly witnessing low ridership than it is required for breakeven.
Lucknow Metro also had AADR of 0.537 and 0.258 lakhs only in 2019-20 and 76 2020-21, respectively, against the ADR required for Breakeven of 0.943 lakhs for all these years. Thus, Lucknow metro also does not have sufficient ridership for breakeven.
According to the report, the Committee thinks that if metro rail projects are to be made as mass transportation medium in true sense and operate on sustainable basis so that the commuters will travel by metro for which proper facilities should be made available to them in terms of comfort, convenience, quality, affordability and reliability, etc.
The Committee has recommended taking concrete steps to increase ridership of all metro projects. It has also asked to ensure that ridership estimation which forms the basis for the selection of type of metro (conventional or metrolite or metroneo) must be accurate and realistic.