According to the official, daily operations cost is about Rs 5 crore. (Representational)The suspension of services and subsequently limiting only essential service workers to travel in them following the ‘unlockdown’ have caused losses of Rs 850 crore to Mumbai’s suburban train system so far.
The losses of Western Railway (WR) are pegged at Rs 415 crore while that of Central Railway (CR) are Rs 435 crore.
CR and WR used to run more than 3,000 services a day before the pandemic, ferrying 7.8 million commuters daily. But from March 21 when the lockdown came into force, the railways shut operations of local trains fully for 70 days, till May 31. Later, following guidelines issued by the Centre and state government, train services were started only for essential service providers.
Right now, together CR and WR are running 937 services daily, 506 on WR and 431 on CR, ferrying 9-10 lakh commuters daily, or just 10 per cent of pre-pandemic figures.
As per information provided by WR, its losses till September 27 were Rs 2,727 crore — Rs 415 crore for suburban section and
Rs 2,312 crore for non-suburban section.
A senior official from CR said, “On a normal day with 1,716 services on CR’s main, harbour and trans-harbour line, CR used to earn Rs 2 crore.
Even though local train operations have not been fully restored, the cost of maintenance is almost the same.”
According to the official, daily operations cost is about Rs 5 crore.
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