C T Online Desk: Women passengers are considering metro rail safer than other public transports, especially buses.
Female passengers sometimes face untoward situations while travelling to bus or other transport.
They would not have to face such an incident on the metro rail, think the women passengers who are traveling on the metro rail on the first day.
The presence of women passengers were visible from the metro rail stations that left from Agargaon station for Uttara on Thursday morning.
But even though there was a separate room for women, it was not crowded.
This information was gathered by talking to several women passengers while going to Uttara from Agargaon station in the capital on Thursday.
A Metrorail passenger named Samia told the Bangla Tribune: “There is no opportunity for such incidents to happen in the metro rail, which sometimes happen in buses. I think metro rail will be much safer than bus.”
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the first ever metro rail service in the capital amid much enthusiasm and festivity.
She inaugurated the operation of the first phase of the project– Uttara to Agargaon.
The latest addition to Dhaka’s public transport started its first journey with passengers at 8am in the morning.
Initially, the metro trains will run from 8 am to 12 noon every day from Uttara to Agargaon stations without any stoppage.
It will take 20 minutes to travel the 11.73km distance from Uttara to Agargaon, but soon it will come down to 16-17 minutes.
In the beginning, the trains will not stop at all stations. They will leave the Uttara station and stop at Pallabi, and then they will go to Agargaon without stopping. The stopping of trains at intermediate stations will start later.
Initially, the trains will carry 200 to 250 passengers and later 700 to 800 passengers.
Of the 12 trains ready for operating from Uttara to Agargaon, 10 will run regularly and two will be on standby for any problems.
The metro rail project was taken up in 2012, and a loan agreement in this regard was signed with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a Japanese development cooperation agency, the following year.
