KOLKATA: Metro Railway added 38 services along the north-south line from Wednesday, apprehending a rise in the number of commuters as local trains resumed services after a seven-and-a-half-month hiatus. But even as the carrier was expecting to cross 1-lakh ridership, the passenger count clocked 98,089, barely 2,000 short of the milestone.
On Wednesday, 25% of the services were increased, assuming that more people would take the Metro because of the resumption of suburban services. The number of daily trains was up from 152 to 190. Most of the added trains started from Dum Dum that shares its premises with the railway station. The authorities have been looking forward to touching the 1-lakh figure ever since the graded resumption on September 14.
Sanjay Chatterjee, who has been appointed by the state government to develop the link, from where e-passes are generated, said, “From the day’s trend, we assumed that the one lakh mark wouldn’t be achieved on Wednesday even as 25% more services were added. The number of e-passes booked was around 1.4 lakh. There’s usually a 45,000 gap between passes booked and actual ridership. So, we had guessed around 98,000 passengers.”
But the authorities are confident that the added services would be utilized to the hilt and ridership would go up to 1.5 lakh in the next one or two weeks. “Several of those, who took the Metro, are from the suburbs. They travel by local trains till Dum Dum and then take the Metro to reach their various destinations in the city,” said an official. Additional Metro officials and RPF personnel were deployed at Dum Dum that recorded till November 2 71,000 footfalls against 20 lakh footfalls in pre-pandemic times. Only smart cards are used to board a Metro as no tokens are issued.