Daily footfall in Mumbai local trains crosses 8 Lakhs

Despite a limited section of commuters allowed on suburban local trains, the number passengers on the Western Railway is increasing day by day. The local trains had to be shut down in March when the nationwide shut down was announced. They were started in June in a staggered manner. Till now the general public is not allowed to travel via local trains. Despite this, with the addition of 66,000 passengers in the last 15 days, the number of daily passengers has crossed 8 lakhs.

The local services, which were closed for the general public in March, was only open for essential staff. Local passengers began to increase gradually after various categories of employees along with women were allowed to travel with restricted timings. Even though the local is not open to everyone at present, the attendance of essential service personnel has reached 100 per cent.

In the last 15 days, the number of passengers has increased significantly. As on December 23, 2020, 7.60 lakh passengers had commuted in the local. It was informed that by January 6, 2021, the number of footfalls has reached to 8.26 lakhs.

Before the lockdown, there were 1,367 round trips per day on the Western Railway. Now the number of such rounds is 1,201. As the number of passengers is increasing, some increase in these rounds is also being considered.

Recently, the women commuters demanded an increase in the frequency of local trains to curb the crowd during the peak evening hours. The issue was put forth recently by the women commuters towards the Thane Railway Passengers Association. As the long gap between the frequency of locals during evening hours are leading to a crowd of women commuters in trains.

Besides, the number of ticketless, unauthorised passengers has gone up significantly. The Railways has increased surveillance to book and has found a sharp rise in ticketless commuters compared to pre-COVID times.

The daily number of ticketless commuters booked was 1,000 against around 4.5 million commuters before the lockdown in March 2020 due to pandemic. It has increased to 1,500 unauthorised commuters booked daily when the number of commuters is restricted to 800,000 daily.