KOLKATA: From this week, you won’t need e-pass to ride the north-south Metro on weekends. On Sundays, services will start at 9am instead of 10am and go on till 10.30pm instead of 9pm. There will be more trains on Sundays as the interval between two trains has been reduced from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. The weekday schedule will be followed on Saturdays.
TOI on Tuesday had reported that commuters would be spared of booking e-passes for Saturdays as well. Metro Railway has already decided to lift e-pass restrictions on Sundays. The call on an entire e-pass-free weekend was taken on Tuesday. “We may exempt the e-pass rule on Saturdays as well, because fewer people travel,” Metro Railway general manager Manoj Joshi had told TOI on Monday.
There are no office-goers Saturdays. Sanjay Chatterjee, who was appointed by the state government to develop the e-pass technology for Metro as a means of crowd control in Covid times, had said, “Considering the low footfall on Saturdays, we have recommended lifting e-pass rule for Saturdays as well.”
E-passes, generated from a link developed by Chatterjee’s company, are booked in advance to access the north-south line. With the technology in place, only 400 can board at a time. Before the pandemic, 6.5 lakh rode the north-south Metro daily and around 3,000 travelled at a time by an eight-coach train. Now, even though nearly 1.3 lakh ride daily, no more than 400 are accommodated at a time, thanks to the digital passes. This way, physical distance is maintained on India’s oldest Metro that has had the highest passenger density.
Since Monday, Metro Railway has reduced e-pass hours to only two-and-a-half in the morning and three in the evening. Elderly, women and kids below 15 years don’t need e-passes.
Chatterjee believed Metro can ensure physical distancing on Saturdays without the e-passes. Lately, footfall on Saturdays has gone up. Last Saturday, it was 1.06 lakh while Sunday’s passenger count was only 43,586.
Joshi had told TOI on Monday, “We shall have to do away with e-passes completely, as the Covid situation improves.” The GM clarified that the passenger count will be controlled for some more time. “We shall keep adding services to ensure physical distancing,” he said. Since Monday, 12 more services have been added on weekdays and from Sunday there will be 102 services instead of 68.
The e-pass rule doesn’t apply for the East-West Metro, which was flagged off in February this year. The 7km Sector V-Phoolbagan stretch clocks only around 500-plus passengers daily.