On the second day of the fully functional Monorail corridor between Chembur and Mahalaxmi on Tuesday around 23,321 passengers travelled using Monorail generating revenue of Rs 4,10,284 around 4,000 less passengers when compared with the ridership of Monday on its first day of being operational fully.
The overall operations of Monorail started on Monday with around 27,000 passengers using it generating revenue of over Rs 5 lakh. This was higher than its earlier ridership of around 17,000 passengers using its services when the first phase between Chembur and Wadala was functional.
On Monday services of one train was also terminated as floral string used for flowers during innagural ride on Sunday got entangled with the lower section of the train.
Due to this, passengers were evacuated from the particular train on Wadala Depot Monorail station and boarded in other train. The train was back into services an hour after the incident. On the incident, a report will be prepared and submitted to commissioner's office, informed a MMRDA official.
On low ridership, an MMRDA official said, "Monday was a public holiday and the ridership numbers had that in it but now what we are getting are actual numbers who are commuters in real. On Monday many were having joyrides. Also, to get a substantial ridership figure it will at least take a week because it takes time for people to know and decide."
Monish Makhija, Chembur resident said, "For me, it will be nice to have Monorail ride till Lower Parel to my office but there are several amenities like station name information display board requires updation followed by working towards increasing frequency."
The MMRDA is currently operating four trains with a frequency of around 22 minutes for the whole corridor.
Meanwhile, ever since Phase-1's operations started in 2014, its been news for breakdowns. Also the operations of Monorail were shut between November 2017 and August 2018 due to fire inside empty coach. The MMRDA also in December 2018 terminated the contract of Larsen & Toubro and Malaysian Scomi Engineering who were operating Monorail on grounds of non-performance.
