Metro services to go up by 25% from Wed

Kolkata: Number of services in the north-south corridor of Kolkata Metro is going to increase from Wednesday with a target of providing the service at an interval of seven minutes during the morning and evening rush hours.

This comes when the sub-urban train service in Bengal is also going to resume in the state from Wednesday. According to the experts, the move of increasing the Metro service has been taken considering that the flow of passengers would go up once the sub-urban train service resumes.

The Metro service will go up by another 25 per cent. As a result, the number of services in the Kolkata Metro's north-south corridor will go up to 190 trains that are 152 at present.

The Railway Minister Piyush Goyal stated in a tweet that "Kolkata Metro to run additional 25 percent services in North-South Corridor from 11 th November 2020. Increasing passenger convenience and comfort, the number of services in the North-South Corridor will increase from 152 to 190, taking the total number of services to 238".

It is also learnt that the Eastern Railway authorities is also planning to run 45 percent of the trains from Wednesday compared to that used to run in a normal time. As many as 915 suburban trains used to run from Sealdah station in pre-Covid period.

Since many people from districts adjoining Kolkata reaches Sealdah station by suburban train and avail the Metro service to reach to their destinations in the city, the increase in the number of Metro services from Wednesday will be of immense benefit for commuters and at the same time it will also help in proper maintenance of physical distancing as well.

Officers of the state government and the railways held two meetings to prepare a detailed plan of action to resume the suburban train service. Though the railway officers had initially thought of resuming the service with 10 to 15 percent trains initially, later decision was taken later to increase the number of trains following request of the state government to run sufficient number of trains to avoid overcrowding giving priority to the norms of physical distancing.

Since 600 passengers will be allowed to travel at a time in a train with a seating capacity of 1200, more number of trains will help to maintain physical distance.

In pre-Covid period, the per day footfall at Sealdah and Howrah station used to be 35 lakh. Now the authorities are preparing the standard operating procedure that will be followed to maintain the Covid protocol.