Another Metro ridership record of 20L on Friday

NEW DELHI: Delhi Metro carried over 20 lakh people in a day for the first time on Friday, surpassing the ridership record set on August 1 when 1,830,944 passengers took the Metro. However, a day later, it has to face several complaints of delay and over-crowding in trains.
Dipankar Bose, a resident of Noida who boarded the Metro at Noida City Centre on Saturday, said not only was the train very crowded, it also ran very slow."City Centre is the first station but even that was very crowded at past noon on Saturday and by the next station, the train doors could hardly close. It normally takes about 33 minutes to reach Pragati Maidan but on Saturday, it took over 40 minutes," he said. Another commuter, Shruti Singh, who took the train from Yamuna Bank around 4pm, also said the train was running unusually slow.
Metro officials, however, denied that there was any delay on any line and said the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) ran more trains, expecting the Rakshabandhan rush. The ridership figures touched 1,341,819 by 8pm on Saturday.
On Friday's milestone, DMRC officials said this was the first time the Metro carried over 20 lakh passengers on a single day. "This basically fulfilled DMRC managing-director Dr E Sreedharan's dream of achieving this magical figure a good five months ahead of his projected target of December 2011," said a spokesperspon. It carried 2,066,925 passengers on Friday. For the last two months, Delhi Metro has been registering an increased ridership. The average daily ridership, which used to be 14 lakh in May 2011, jumped to 15 lakh in June 2011 and further to over 16 lakh in July 2011.
On Friday, each of the Metro's six lines grossed highest ridership in individual capacity, too.
The Metro network, which was just 87km in January 2010, has added another 100km in a period of over one year and has 143 stations. The process of converting four-coach trains into six-coach ones started in December 2010 and till date, 74 six-coach trains are running on lines 1, 2, 3 and 4. The Metro has a pool of 200 trains.