About 66K avail East-West Metro services on Saturday

KOLKATA: Metro Railway saw a record footfall of 66,000 on the East-West Metro corridor on Saturday amidst the 46th International Kolkata Book Fair which is being held at Salt Lake Sector-V. The Metro railway carried 6,15,675 passengers in total.

The majority of footfall was recorded at Sealdah, Karunamoyee, and Salt Lake Sector-V Metro stations. Ever since the beginning of the book fair at the ‘Boi Mela Prangan’ on January 31, the number of commuters availing the East-West corridor metro has increased significantly. Between January 31 to February 11, the Metro railway witnessed more than 50,000 commuters per day.

According to Metro railway officials, they recorded 58267 commuters on February 9. During this duration, the majority of footfall was recorded at the Sealdah metro station, followed by Karunamoyee and then Salt Lake Sector-V.

As per their update on February 11, the Metro railway had carried 5,49,675 passengers on this corridor. Out of which, a total of 410971 footfalls were recorded at Sealdah, Karunamoyee, and Salt Lake Sector-V. When the book fair was ongoing, Sealdah had become the busiest station recording a 203010 passenger count while Karunamoyee recorded 121835, followed by Salt Lake Sector-V with 86,126 passengers.

Seeing this rush, Metro officials decided on adding facilities to make commuting easier for passengers. Digital standees were installed at the Karunamoyee station showing directions to the Metro lines to the commuters.For the convenience of the book lovers visiting the fair, additional Metro services were operated on this corridor from January 30 to February 12, including Sundays, which are usually days on which the Metro operations on the route remain usually closed. On the last day of the fair, Sunday, services were plied from 12:50 pm to 10 pm.