Chennai: After more than 3.22 lakh travelled in metro trains daily in March, ridership dropped to around 3 lakh in April.Chennai Metro Rail Limited, in a release on Saturday, said that 90.18 lakh passengers travelled in metro trains last month. In March, 1.01 crore people travelled, averaging 3.22 lakh daily. Feb saw a total of 96.4 lakh passengers using metro services, and Jan recorded 93.28 lakh.Officials attributed the drop to summer holidays for schools and extended weekends in April. Last month’s peak daily ridership of 3.65 lakh was recorded on April 2, ahead of an extended weekend.To attract more footfall, CMRL has pushed event-based travel initiatives such as free rides for IPL 2026 matches and other events such as marathons. This encouraged 40,265 people to use the service — a fraction of total ridership. The average of 3.2 lakh remains far below the initial estimate of 7.75 lakh.In April, most commuters continued to rely on integrated ticketing options such as the national common mobility card, which accounted for more than 45 lakh users. Around 25,659 used CMRL travel cards, 17.83 lakh used paper QRs and tokens, 11.48 lakh used Open Network for Digital Commerce-enabled apps such as Uber and Rapido, 4.2 lakh booked through WhatsApp, and 1.84 lakh used the Chennai One app.Urban transport experts have long pointed out that metro usage in the city remains low due to poor last-mile connectivity and weak integration with other modes.“The ridership in phase-1 lines is low because metro connects only some parts of the city. Once phase-2 lines open, phase-1 lines will see a significant rise in footfall. This happened in Delhi Metro, and it will happen here too,” former CMRL official R Ramanathan said.
