Delhi Metro rides will get more expensive from October, as the fares are set to increase for a second time this year. The fares were last revised in May. However, the hike won’t be too steep this time, going up by a maximum of Rs 10.

The DMRC had announced the hike in fares as per the recommendations of the fourth Fare Fixation Committee. Phase one of the hike came into effect in May, the second phase will be implemented from October.

Sources also said that despite the hike, Metro fares will still be lowest among all Indian and foreign cities.

According to DMRC, the fare will be increased by a maximum of Rs 10. The minimum fare will be Rs 10 and the maximum would be Rs 60. For travel distance of less than two kilometres, the fare will remain Rs 10. For distances between two and five kilometres, the fare will go up from Rs 15 to Rs 20.

For all other distance zones, fares will be increased by Rs 10, with the maximum fare for journeys longer than 32 kms going up from Rs 50 to Rs 60.

The DMRC had recorded a fall in ridership when they had first hiked the rates in May this year. The maximum fare then was hiked from Rs 30 to Rs 50. Ridership for the month of June dropped by over 44.8 lakh across the six lines from 2016 to 2017, with the highest drop recorded for line 2. Line 2 had a ridership of 2.92 crores in June 2016, which declined by over 21 lakhs to 2.7 crores in June 2017.

However, a DMRC spokesperson said that the ridership had since picked up, and the hike was necessary to meet their input costs.

“Electricity tariffs have increased by almost 100 per cent, and the DMRC pays industrial tariffs. We need to meet our input costs. Nobody otherwise would like to hike fares,” they said.

The DMRC had been dealing with depleting savings, a Rs 45,000 crore debt and increasing operating ratio, which left little for maintenance, before it revised its fares in May.

“The necessity of revision in fares was on account of increase in the cost of inputs - the staff costs, the cost of energy and the cost of repair and maintenance,” a DMRC spokesperson had said then. “Since constitution of the third fare fixation committee, there has been increase in the rate of industrial dearness allowance (DA) by 95.5 per cent (from 16.90 per cent to 112.40 per cent), rate of Central DA by 103 per cent (from 22 per cent to 125 per cent) and average increase in the rate of minimum wages by 156.2 per cent. The last fare revision took place in 2009 and the 4th committee was set up after almost seven years.”