Fare chart for E-W Metro gets Rail Board approval

Kolkata: The Railway Board has cleared the fare chart for the city's upcoming East-West Metro service which is expected to kick start before the Lok Sabha elections.

The tariff structure approved by Railway Board says that a commuter will have to pay Rs 5 for travelling up to 2 km while up to 5 km the fare has been fixed at Rs 10. For 5-10 km a commuter will have to pay Rs 20 and for 10-16.5km the fare will be Rs 30.

According to the sources in the Metro railways, the East-West metro services between the stretches from Salt Lake to Sector V will be made operational before Lok Sabha elections. The operations of Phase 1 would be covering a distance of 5.8 km between the Sector V and Salt Lake Stadium.

For the existing metro corridor between North and South, the base fare is Rs 5 and the commuters now can travel up to 5 km at the base fare of Rs 5. But in case of East-West Metro, a commuter can only travel up to 2 km by paying the base fare of Rs 5 instead of up to 5 km in the North-South corridor.

As the distance between two East-West metro stations is 2 km or more, one has to pay a minimum Rs 10 if he/she desires to travel to a destination which is just two stations away. It can also be mentioned here that in the case of existing Metro service around 34 percent passengers belong to the segment of Rs 5 as they travel up to 5 km. But in case of the forthcoming East-West Metro corridor most of the commuters fall in the Rs 10 segment.

According to Metro Railways, the new metro services will be based on the most advanced technology and the signalling system would be at par with those being operated in Sanghai. The most advanced signalling system will help Metro railway officials to run trains at a frequency of two and half minutes.