Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will run over 160 extra trips on Thursday, the day when the city and the nation celebrate the sibling festival of Raksha Bandhan.
A statement said that trains will be run at peak-hour frequency from 8 am to 8.30 pm on Thursday, and over 20 trains which are normally withdrawn from lines during off peak hours (12:30 pm to 4:30 pm) will be kept in service, making a total of about 2,900 trips today.
DMRC will also deploy more Customer Facilitation Agents (CFA) to help and guide commuters today.
A total of 182 shifts of CFAs of four hours each have been arranged for this purpose at 93 Metro stations.
The prominent stations to have extra CFA deployment are Dilshad Garden, Shahdara, Welcome, Seelampur, Shastri Park, Pitampura, Rohini East, Rohini West, Rithala, Jahangir Puri, Adarsh Nagar, GTB Nagar, Yamuna Bank, Uttam Nagar East, Nawada, Noida City Centre, Botanical Garden, Noida Sec-18, MG Road, HUDA City Centre, Sarita Vihar, Lajpat Nagar, Badarpur Peeragarhi, Nangloi and Mundka etc.
In addition, extra personnel will be deployed to handle the increased load on the ticketing system.
Metro ticketing staff at 93 stations will do 228 additional shifts of four hours each.
The extra manpower will be deployed mainly at Dilshad Garden, Shahdara, Welcome, Rohini West, Tilak Nagar, Nawada, Uttam Nagar East, Yamuna Bank, Noida City Centre, Botanical Garden, Noida Sec-18, Moolchand, Govindpuri, Badarpur, Qutab Minar, Malviya Nagar, Saket, HUDA City Centre, Peeragarhi, Nangloi and Mundka etc.
The Delhi Metro normally witnesses greater rush of commuters on Raksha Bandhan Day.
In 2011, around 17 lakh passengers travelled on Raksha Bandhan Day by the Metro.
At present, the Delhi Metro ridership has already increased substantially, carrying over 19 lakh passengers per day in July 2012, which is the maximum average ridership registered so far in any month.
(With ANI inputs)
