Kolkata: Sealdah East-West link pushes up daily footfall from 3,000 to 41,000 in a week

KOLKATA: East-West Metro has secured a weekly ridership jump of 10,000 since the commissioning of Sealdah station. Kolkata’s Line 2 breached the 40,000 mark on Thursday and recorded 41,956 footfalls. A week ago, on July 14, it made a head-start from 3,376 passenger count to 31,037. The graph surged steadily to 31,883 on Day 2, 29,182 on Day 3 (Saturday), to 36,044 on Day 5 (Tuesday) and finally, 41,956 on Thursday. Overall, the weekly rider count on the East-West corridor has jumped from around 21,000 before the Sealdah connection to around 2.4 lakh now.
Before Sealdah was linked, the East-West Metro registered a daily footfall of 3,000 passengers. In comparison the North-South corridor clocked 6.5 lakh daily ridership in pre-pandemic times and currently has a 5 lakh passenger count. E-W Metro’s 6.6km Sector V-Phoolbagan segment failed to draw meaningful crowd even two years after its launch, forcing authorities to reduce the initial 74 services to 48 for five days a week. However, with 2.3km Sealdah extension, Line 2 started attracting commuters. East-West Metro now has 100 daily services (in each direction) with trains running at 15minute intervals at peak hours and 20minute gaps during lean hours.
Commuters now cover the 9.1km Sector V-Sealdah stretch in 21 minutes for Rs 20. When fully operational, it will cover 16km till Howrah Maidan, via river Hooghly, to become India’s first underwater Metro. “It’s heartening to see E-W Metro pulling 5,000 more passengers than the projected count. Soon, we shall breach the 50,000 mark,” a Metro Railway spokesperson said. The Metro official echoed, “People are lapping up the speed and comfort. It takes at least an hour to commute the distance on public buses.”