Spl Metro services at 11 pm to be preponed by 20 min

Kolkata: Hoping to attract a desirable number of passengers for the special Metro services on Blue Line at 11 pm, Metro Railway authorities have decided to prepone the timing of the service by 20 minutes from June 24.

The special service was started on an experimental basis from May 24. These services on both Up and Down directions left Kavi Subhash and Dum Dum stations at 11 pm from Monday to Friday. According to Metro authorities, only 300 passengers on an average are travelling in each train at night.

The revenue earnings from these two trains are Rs 6,000, according to Metro authorities, while they are having to cough up about Rs 2.7 lakh as running cost along with Rs 50,000 as other expenses. “It was observed that in many stations, only one or two tokens on an average are being sold from counters to the commuters willing to avail these experimental night services,” the authorities stated.

Hence, Metro Railway authorities have decided to advance the timing of these experimental night services by 20 minutes from June 24. These experimental night services on Blue Line will start from Kavi Subhash and Dumdum at 10.40 pm. No ticket counter will remain open to issue tokens and Smart Cards at all stations.

Commuters can purchase tokens from the ASCRM machines installed at all stations by using UPI payment mode.

When asked if the decision to run the special Metro service on both Up and Down directions from Kavi Subhash and Dum Dum stations at 11 pm from Monday to Friday stemmed out of the direction by the Calcutta High Court for Metro authorities to consider extending the timing of Metro services, the Metro official informed that it was not related to the case. “We were getting requests from people for the special service. Hence, we decided to do it on an experimental basis,” the official said.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a Calcutta High Court advocate was heard by the Division Bench of Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya. The PIL stated that in other states with Metro services, the last service is usually at 11 pm. However, in the case of Kolkata Metro, the last time is 9:40 pm, according to the petitioner.