Amid rising passenger pressure, the Dhaka metro-rail company is actively considering increasing the number of trains and frequency of headways to reduce the time of arrival.
The operations and technical team of the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL) was working on increasing the train sets of Mass Rapid Transit Line 6 (MRT 6) from the existing eight to 10-11 for reducing the time of arrival to seven minutes, sources said.
The headways are yet to be finalised, however.
"We are sincerely considering managing the crowd as the station-wise pressure is gradually mounting with rising sales of regular cards," said an official, adding that the sales of MRT pass and Rapid Pass reached around 300,000 until January 31. It also helped reduce the pressure at the ticket counters.
Officials said the DMTCL is waiting for a fresh batch of 22 newly recruited train controllers and operators who are expected to complete their training within a week or two.
"The reduction in the headway time depends on manpower, number of passengers and many other factors ... all these are being assessed based on data," DMTCL Company Secretary Mohammad Abdul Rouf told the FE.
He, however, said the existing capacity is yet to be saturated as an average of around 1,000 passengers are travelling in the off-peak hours against a capacity of 2308 passengers per train. He also pointed out that the crowd management would be easy with rising sales of the MRT and Rapid pass.
According to official data, the sales of MRT passes recorded at more than 270,000 and Rapid passes 30,000, crossing regular users of around 300,000 so far. In the first week of operation after integrating the two sides of MRT-6 on January 20, IC card sales were recorded at 274,174. Since January, the total sales of MRT passes have been around 60,000.
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