Hinjewadi-Shivajinagar metro to open to public on November 4, full-trip fare Rs 62

The Hinjewadi-Shivajinagar metro, which Pune's IT employees have awaited for years, is finally starting. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the route on the morning of November 3. The metro will open to the general public from 6 am the next day, Wednesday, November 4.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar will be present at Balewadi for the inauguration. PMRDA Commissioner Abhijeet Choudhary said 17 stations on the route will open in the first phase. The remaining six stations will open in stages by January 2027, Choudhary said.

According to Choudhary, trains will run every 6 minutes during the office rush, from 7.30 am to 9.30 am and 4 pm to 7 pm. At other times, when crowds are thinner, a train will run every 12 minutes. The first train will leave at 6 am, and the last train from District Court towards Hinjewadi will leave at 11.40 pm. Twenty-two trains are ready for the route.

The new route will be known as the Pink Line or Puneri Metro. A trip from District Court to Hinjewadi Phase 3, the Megapolis Circle, will cost only Rs 62. The full journey will take about 45 minutes. IT employees at present take one and a half to two hours to reach Hinjewadi, stuck in traffic, so they will save at least an hour a day.

The project is the first approved under the Centre's 2017 metro policy and has been built under a PPP, or public-private partnership. For this reason, its ticket is somewhat costlier than on other metros, a point the commissioner himself acknowledged.

Tickets will be available at station counters as well as through a QR code. Metro tickets will now also be available on WhatsApp, so there will be no need to stand in a queue. The route's facilities will also be added to the Mahametro app. In the coming days, a single ticket valid across all three of Pune's metro routes will also be introduced, so that passengers do not have to buy separate tickets.

Fares by distance will be as follows: Rs 12 for 0 to 2 km, Rs 25 for 2 to 4 km, Rs 37 for 4 to 8 km, Rs 45 for 8 to 12 km, Rs 49 for 12 to 18 km and Rs 62 for more than 18 km.

The foundation stone for this metro was also laid by Prime Minister Modi, in November 2018. It was then expected that the work would be completed in five years, but it was halted because of Covid. A deadline of March 2025 was then set, and that too was missed. Dates slipped around six to eight times. The metro is now starting after nine years. Other metros usually open to passengers two to three hours after inauguration, but here the inauguration is on the 3rd and services begin on the 4th.