Hyderabad Metro allows travel with Bicycle!

Our cycling friend from Hyderabad, Prajwal Pingali, is an ardent lover of bicycles and the metro rail in context of urban transport. So he dug up the rules and went to the metro rail with his bicycle in tow.

It took him a bit of explaining that bicycles are allowed on the metro. The metro officials didn’t know about it and were kind of perplexed that a 20-year-old was reading out the rule book to them!

Eventually they did allow Prajwal to board the metro train with his bicycle and go for a ride. An important point to be added here is that this wasn’t a folding bicycle which fits in the luggage scanner. It was a full sized road bike.

It is excellent news for cyclists of the city, now that they can use the convenience of the metro in their bicycle commute. There is a one tiny hiccup though, the metro rules ‘request’ passengers to carry bicycles only during non-peak hours. Which is a bit of an ambiguous statement. Request isn’t a hard rule. And peak hours isn’t specified. So can you take your bike at any time of the day? We don’t know! But you might want to find out…

Here’s a screen grab of the rule book which helped Prajwal get on the metro train:

You can see all the FAQs here.

Till just a few years back, the Hyderabad Metro Rail did not allow bicycles on board. Not even folding bikes. As was reported by Deccan Chronicle.

Since the pandemic, first Chennai, then Bangalore and then Kochi Metros allowed bicycles on their trains. It is fantastic to see Hyderabad follow suit. We now await the big cities like Mumbai and Delhi to also add this functionality to their service.

It greatly helps with last mile connectivity. You can read about bicycles on the Kochi Metro Rail here.

Photo and Info: Prajwal Pingali