Metro rail to run on Fridays

The popular mode of public transport, metro rail, will run on Fridays from this week as per the demand of the passengers.

"Efforts are underway to run metro rail on weekly holidays from this Friday (September 20) following the decision of the ministry," Mohammad Abdur Rouf, Managing Director of Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL), told BSS here today.

He said the authority also expects that the metro trains will stop at Kazipara station from Friday (September 20) as it is being ready for operational activities.

During the 'Complete Shutdown' programme of the antidiscrimination students movement, miscreants vandalized Mirpur-10 and Kazipara stations in the evening of July 19. 

They vandalized everything including the station's ticket vending machine and passenger entry punch machine at the main station, which forced to keep closed the two stations for 37 days.

The metro rail started running again on August 25, but the two stations remained closed. 

The managing director said that the authority has been relentlessly working to prepare the two stations for passengers. Earlier, the estimated cost for repairing those stations was Tk 300 crore, but later a committee was formed to further scrutinize the repairing cost. 

"We hope that the repairing cost of those stations will reduce as we are procuring equipments from local market," he said.

He further said that the final repair cost will be estimated after getting report of the review committee.

According to the concerned sources, the authorities have taken the initiative to renovate and open two closed stations. As a result, Kazipara station can be opened on September 20, while Mirpur-10 station will take a few more months to become operational.

Managing Director Abdur Rauf said, "Our adviser instructed to run the metro rail on Fridays. Another challenge was the commissioning of Kazipara and Mirpur-10 stations. We have worked on Kazipara station quickly. The station will be ready by September 18."