Mumbai Metro commuters prefer smart cards over tickets

A majority of the Mumbai Metro passengers use smart card to commute and save time by not standing in queues to purchase tickets.

According to data maintained by Mumbai Metro, out of the daily average of 2,93,414 passengers in September a majority or 1,54,916 travelled using smart cards whereas the remaining 1,38,498 commuters bought tokens to travel to their respective destinations between Versova and Ghatkopar.

"Every month we sell anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 passes," shared a Mumbai Metro official. With the current breakup of 55:45 for card and token respectively, the authorities are marketing smart cards to metro users.

The projection is to have 70% of the metro commuters using a smart card to travel between the 12 metro stations between Versova and Ghatkopar. Right from the day of commissioning on June 8, 2014 till September, a total of around 5.5 lakh smart cards have been sold and only 200-300 of them have been returned by public to claim the deposit amount.

The figures reveal that Ghatkopar metro station continues to be the metro station from where most of the people commence their metro journey, whereas Jagruti Nagar is least used by public. Last month, a daily average of 84,654 commuters began their journey from Ghatkopar metro station, while only 4,187 hopped into the metro from Jagruti Nagar metro station.

Andheri metro station has the second highest number of passengers beginning their metro journey at an average of 62,229 and Asalfa is the second lowest at 10,316.