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28 March 2024

Commuters demand changes in metro timing

Published
By Staff

Commuters have urged the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) to increase the frequency of metro early morning and start the service ealier than its current scheduled time of 6am.

Commuters also wished for a greater efficiency in the feeder services, that help metro users reach their destinations.

English daily Khaleej Times on Wednesday quoted several early morning commuters relating their travel travails and urging the authority to ring in the changes.

Although, all the quoted passengers sang praises of metro and conceded that the train service has helped them travel better and faster across the city, the felt that a little expansion of its services and a slight flexibility would help commuters more.

“There are so many people on the train that there is no space to even keep your feet, it’s so suffocating that you can’t even breathe. This happens because everybody wants to reach office in time and the next train is after 10 minutes,” says Muriel D'sa, who takes the first train of the day at 6:16am from the Union Square Station.

She suggests the authorities to start the service at least half an hour ealier than the current scheduled time, which would help distribute passengers to different trains.

Early morning troubles of metro passengers continue with the feeder services along the stations near Al Quoz, where passengers claim that the buses are either late or too few and far between.

“Everyday I reach the First Gulf Bank (FGB) station at around 6.50 in the morning and find that either there is no feeder bus or if it is there it doesn’t start on time. There are dozens like me who are dependent on this service to reach office because there is no other way and if there are taxis we can’t afford it,” Khaleej Times quoted Neesha Kapoor, who is a regular metro user, as saying.

Another regular commuter who starts from the Financial Centre station and gets down at FGB claimed he faces the same problem.

Fareed starts on the Metro from the Financial Centre station and the first feeder bus usually leaves before he gets down at the First Gulf Bank station, which means he has to wait for another 30 minutes for the next bus, making him late for work most of the days.

“To catch the first feeder bus I have to either catch the first Metro, which is not possible because it is completely filled by the time it reaches Financial Centre Station, or if I wait for the second Metro which comes after 10 minutes I miss the feeder bus and get late to work,” says Fareed, who claims there are dozens of others who face similar dilemma everyday.

Metro’s growing popularity as the most preferred mode of transport in the city seems to be causing problems for its regular users and they feel the only way things can improve is by advancing the timings as well as improving the frequency of both the trains and the feeder buses.