Dhaka Metro Rail will extend its daily operating hours by one hour starting next Sunday, with trains running earlier in the morning and later at night, officials confirmed.
Under the new schedule, the first train from Uttara North will depart at 6:40 am instead of 7:10 am, while the last train will leave at 9:30 pm instead of 9:00 pm. From Motijheel, the first train will run at 7:00 am instead of 7:30 am, and the last one will depart at 10:10 pm—arriving at Uttara North around 10:45 pm.
On Fridays, metro services will begin at 2:30 pm (instead of 3:00 pm) and continue half an hour longer into the night.
The decision, part of a broader initiative by the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL) to enhance passenger convenience, was finalized during a meeting on Tuesday. A trial run of the new schedule began on September 25.
DMTCL Managing Director Faruq Ahmed said the move follows months of operational testing.
“We’re planning to run metro rail for one extra hour from Sunday and will continue trial operations before finalizing the increase in trips, which we hope to implement by mid-next month,” he said.
By mid-November, DMTCL also plans to increase the number of daily train trips by reducing intervals between trains. The new intervals will be 4 minutes during peak hours (down from 6), 6 minutes off-peak (down from 8), and 8 minutes during super off-peak (down from 10).
Currently, metro trains make 238 passenger trips per day using 12 out of 24 train sets. Once the new schedule is in place, 19 train sets will operate daily, while two sets will remain in workshops for testing and maintenance and one will continue early morning line tests.
Around 450,000 passengers currently use the metro each day, a figure DMTCL expects to exceed 500,000 once extended hours and additional trips are introduced.
Regular commuter Arshadul Haque, a travel agency employee, welcomed the move.
“In a traffic-congested city like Dhaka, the demand for metro rail is very high. Increasing service hours and trip frequency will be a big help for commuters,” he said.
The Dhaka Metro Rail was inaugurated on December 28, 2022, initially running between Uttara and Agargaon. Full operations up to Motijheel began late last year, and expansion toward Kamalapur is now underway.
Originally approved in 2012, the project’s budget has risen from Tk 21,985 crore to Tk 33,472 crore, with funding support including a Tk 19,718 crore loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
