Kochi Metro may roll back fares in March

KOCHI

Commuters may have to pay less to travel in the Kochi metro from March 2023, if the fare revision committee decides to roll back fares.

It will be in sync with efforts being made by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to rationalise the fare structure of metro rail systems in the country. The existing fares will prevail for now despite demand from different quarters. The emphasis is to increase the daily ridership figure from 70,000 to 1 lakh, official sources said.

At present, commuters who have not availed any of the passes or the Kochi-1 pre-paid card and do not get any travel concession available to categories of commuters like senior citizens have to pay as high as ₹65 for travelling in the 27-km Aluva-Thripunithura SN Junction corridor, a fare fixed in 2017 when the metro was commissioned.

E. Sreedharan, former principal advisor to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), who oversaw the Kochi metro’s execution was among those who have been demanding that Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) slash fares, considering the thumb rule that metro fare should never be over 1.5 times the ordinary bus fare. Their logic was that only that would wean commuters away from private vehicles and buses in order to reduce the revenue-expenditure gap.

Sudheer Babu, an author of business-management books and managing director of city-based De Valor Management Consultants which had conducted an opinion survey in 2017 among commuters (of which 43% demanded reducing of fare) of different modes of transport, said the metro fare must be unaffordable for middle and low-income groups. “Kochi might be the only metro rail system in the country which is not patronised by members of the working class, although local and migrant labourers earn wages that are higher than in the rest of the country, and the city is home to a large floating population,” he observed.

The increasing reliance on private vehicles, which is causing endless chaos on roads, is a sign that metro fares must be brought down. Else, Kochi could end up as congested and polluted as Bengaluru. The management needs long-term vision and must ready a route map, failing which it will meet the same plight as that of the KSRTC. Outdoor publicity highlighting the reliability, speed, comfort and safety of commute by metro too must resume in a big way, he said.