Metro rail sets new ridership record

The popularity of Dhaka's metro rail continues to surge breaking another records with highest ridership of over 400,000 on Thursday.

Despite the rising demand, the metro rail company has been unable to increase train operations or reduce headway times.

According to Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL), a record 403,164 passengers used the metro rail February 13 breaking its previous record of 382,088 on February 3. Earlier, the highest daily ridership was 381,055 on January 23, while the metro rail carries 350,000 passengers on average every day.

Officials attributed the recent rise in ridership to the temporary addition of six extra trains for three days to accommodate pilgrims attending the Biswa Ijtema. This increased the total number of daily trips from 200 to 206.

Despite the growing demand and popularity, the company cannot increase train sets and reduce headway time due a lack of skilled manpower to operate the system in three shifts.

Each train of the MRT-6 has a capacity of over 2,300 and the earlier study suggests that once fully operational, the MRT-6 can transport 60,000 passengers per hour.

On December 29, 2022, the DMTCL launched the operation of MRT-6 partially for four hours from Uttara to Agargaon. Its 10.1 kilometre corridor from Uttara to Motijheel operating from 7 am to 9:30 pm was launched in January 2024.

DMTCL Managing Director in charge Mohammad Abdur Rouf stated they have a plan to reduce the headway time in May and introduce full-scale operation on Friday by May. He said they have been working to reduce the headway times to six minutes during peak hours and eight minutes during off-peak hour by May.

However, the MRT-1, MRT-5 North and MRT-5 South which were supposed to be at the physical stage by now remain behind schedule due to complexity in land acquisition, utility shifting challenges and delays in securing approvals from financiers.

Officials of all these three MRT projects said a significant amount of time has been spent on acquiring land for depots and stations. The MRT line planned to connect Airport with Kamalapur through Progoti Sarani and Purbachal still lag behind schedule due to delays in obtaining concurrence for its different contract packages in time from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Similar delays in obtaining JICA's concurrence have also affected the MRT-5 North project. However, the delay in the MRT-5 South project was linked with its high cost and demands from some quarters to change the route. There is no progress in MRT-2 and MRT-4 due to failure to find financiers and start feasibility study.

The DMTCL has set a master plan to introduce all six MRT lines by 2030 including MRT-6 by 2025, MRT-1 by 2026, MRT- 5 North and MRT- 5 South by 2028, but none of these projects could meet the targets due to slow pace of implementation.

smunima@yahoo.com