The Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro which was planned to improve East-West connectivity in Mumbai and partially decongest interchange station at Dadar has somewhat managed to achieve its goal.
Majority of the commuters travelling in suburban local trains prefer Metro to switchover from Central Railway to Western Railway. The data available with dna states that as on August 2015, an average of 28,417 passengers hopped on to metro rail from Ghatkopar to go to Andheri station on a daily basis.
Before the metro line was commissioned on June 8, 2014, people used to either take a bus to cover the distance between Andheri and Ghatkopar or change suburban trains at Dadar by switching over between Central and Western Railways.
The second most popular commuting route is Andheri to Sakinaka with an average of 25,961 commuters travelling in September this year. The least preferred travel along the 11.4-km corridor is Jagruti Nagar Metro station to Asalfa, with daily average of just 23 passengers. This is followed by Marol Naka to Airport Road where daily average of passengers who board train at Marol Naka for Airport Road is only 58.
Meanwhile, ridership on Mumbai Metro is gradually picking up. Data shared by Mumbai Metro shows that as on August this year the daily average ridership on weekdays has been 2.93 lakh as against 2.67 lakh in August 2014.
"But there is a lot of difference in the data of ridership on weekends. This is due to the excitement for metro among public during the months of June-December. Families and joyriders used to travel on Metro on weekends, additionally there were various promotional fares for the weekend," said a Mumbai Metro official.
The present fare of Metro is Rs10-20-30-40. As per the earlier announcement made, there may be a revision in fares starting from November 1. It may be in the range of Rs10 to Rs110, that is Rs10 to travel each station.
