chennai passengers can no longer travel with their bicycles on metro trains as chennai metro rail limited has discontinued the facility due to lack of space in trains because of rising footfalls cmrl allowed passengers to travel with their small and foldable bicycles in the special class coach for a brief period in 2020 postpandemic footfalls increased and officials said there was barely any space for bicycles we had previously allowed bicycles in the special class coach because very few people travelled in that coach and there was space to park foldable bicycles but now it has been converted into a womens only coach our footfalls have also gone up in the last few months we may not be able to accommodate bicycles a metro rail official said at present an average of 22 lakh people travel daily in metro trains which is an increase from the daily average of 116 lakh passengers recorded before the pandemic in april nearly 67 lakh people travelled on april 28 a record 27 lakh people travelled by metro trains cmrl with a fleet of 52 fourcar trains operates at least 35 trains daily and plans to procure new sixcar trainsofficials said the driverless trains to be procured for the 1189km phase2 may also not have space and facility for passengers to bring bicycles at present kochi metro allows bicycles on trains while bengaluru metro allows passengers to park bicycles at stations sivasubramaniam jayaraman institute for transportation and development policy itdpindia said there is no point in allowing bicycles in trains if the stations are not designed with facilities like elevators that have the space for bicycles instead stations can have exclusive parking spaces for bicycles increasing the ridership should be cmrls priority the biggest problem is they are not able to get the ridership projected when the project was initiated it is also not clear that by allowing bicycles in trains metro rail will get new passengers instead cmrl can provide good first and last mile connectivity and give passengers many options like public bicycle sharing autos and bike taxis he said