On 11 August 2025 — the Yellow Line’s first day — Namma Metro recorded 1,048,031 boardings, its first million-rider day. India’s most congested tech city is finally building the rail network its payrolls demanded a decade ago.
The 19.15-km Yellow Line — RV Road to Bommasandra through the Electronics City IT corridor — opened on 10 August 2025 after an eight-year wait, costing ₹7,160 crore for 16 stations. It was built for 8 lakh daily commuters in south Bengaluru.
The day after opening, the whole network hit 1,048,031 boardings — the first million-rider day in Namma Metro history. The Purple Line carried 451,816, the Green 291,677, and the newborn Yellow 52,215. Within a year the Yellow Line alone averaged 120,000 a day and had carried 3.8 crore riders.
Three operational lines — Purple, Green, Yellow — cover 96 km. Purple Line (Whitefield–Challaghatta) is the workhorse at ~460,000 daily boardings; interchange traffic adds another quarter-million movements.
Train shortages kept Yellow Line frequency at 25 minutes initially; with the final trainset delivered in mid-2026, peak frequency is now 7 minutes — ridership responds in step.
Phase 2A/3 corridors — the Blue Line to the airport and the Pink Line under the south — will finally put Namma Metro on the tarmac at Kempegowda, closing the loop between India’s fastest-growing airport and its biggest employment corridor.
Bengaluru spent a decade as the warning case: world-class payrolls, third-world commutes. The million-rider day does not end that story, but it ends the doubt — when a new line triples its ridership in a year despite running one train every 25 minutes, the demand was never the question.
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