MUMBAI:
Western Railway has managed to achieve 25% of its
pre-Covid daily
ridership and Central Railway 18%, despite the curbs on
commuter travel.
The current daily passenger load on WR is nearly 8.8 lakh as against the 35 lakh before the lockdown was imposed last March. On CR, the daily ridership is currently 8 lakh on all four lines—main, Harbour, Trans-Harbour and Seawoods-Belapur—as against 44 lakh in pre-Covid times.
While WR chief public relations officer Sumeet Thakur pointed out that the daily passenger count is increasing every week, his counterpart on CR Shivaji Sutar said: “Nearly 5.5 lakh passengers travel on CR main line that runs between CSMT-Karjat and CSMT-Kasara every day.”
A CR official said, “Around two lakh passengers are unauthorised travellers; we catch around 1,500 unauthorised travelers daily. People, mostly office-goers, prefer train travel and are even willing to pay the fine as road transport is expensive.”
Suburban train services are the lifeline of Mumbaikars who want trains to be opened to all. Salim Khan, who owns a mobile repair shop in Manish Market, said, “I stay in Rabale and it is a pain to travel to south Mumbai every day. Sometimes I hitch ride on my friend’s bike till Ghatkopar and then take a bus to my shop.”
Currently, only essential service workers are allowed to travel in trains during morning and evening peak hours. During off-peak hours, women, lawyers, registered court clerks, teachers and school staff and dabbawalas are allowed to board locals.
Both CR and WR are allowed to carry not more than 700 passengers per train as per social distancing rules. This means, only 22 lakh people can travel in local trains compared to 80 lakh before the lockdown, even with the full complement of 3,141 services—1,367 on WR and 1,774 on all four CR lines. Currently, WR runs 1,199 services and CR 1,580, including 836 on the main line.