Following approval from the State and Central Governments, Mumbai is set to resume local train operations for a wide range of central government employees in addition to courts, banks, defence, income tax, customs and so on. Employees working in any of these institutions will be allowed to travel to and from their workplace via local trains as per this new decision.
This appears to be a part of the phased reopening of Mumbai, which has seen a recent spike in coronavirus cases. Taking this into consideration, the State Government has announced a lockdown in Maharashtra until July 31.
Local trains have been accessible to essential workers in some capacity since June 15. However, trains were mostly limited to state and civic staff including doctors, police, as well as employees of BEST, Mantralaya, and the state government. The state had permitted approximately 1.25 lakh essential workers to travel at the time.
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Starting Monday, the Western Railway line will see the addition of 40 new trains while there are going to be 20 slow-trains running between Churchgate and Borivali, and 14 fast trains between Churchgate and Virar.
There are also going to be two new slow trains from Virar to Borivli, two slow-trains between Borivali to Vasai, and two fast-trains from Vasai to Churchgate. Central Railway has announced that it will start accepting tatkal bookings for train journeys on or after June 30.
Data indicates that a total of 162 trains currently operate on the Western Railway line each day, while the Central Railway line sees around 130 trains, and the Harbour line has 70 trains per day. It is said that a train with a seating capacity of 1,200 is only allowed to have 750 passengers on board to maintain social distancing.
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