The Central Railway has decided to cancel all intercity trains between Mumbai and Pune, including, the Deccan Queen Express from May 14.
This decision has been taken as the Central railways witnessed a drastic drop in the number of passengers due to lockdown implemented in the wake of coronavirus.
According to reports, the Pune-Mumbai Indrayani Express was cancelled last week. This train will not run until the end of June. Following that, the Pune-Mumbai Deccan Queen has also been cancelled. The train will remain closed from May 14 till further notice, a Central Railway official said.
The railways had resumed trains after the relaxation of lockdown norms during the first wave of coronavirus. These included the Indrayani Express and the Deccan Queen between Pune and Mumbai. However, from the beginning, the response of passengers to these trains was low. After the second wave of coronavirus intensified, these trains began to receive little response. Train reservations fell sharply. As a result, many trains have been cancelled since last month due to lack of passengers.
Moreover, from May 19, the special Mumbai-Kolhapur and Mumbai-Kolhapur Express trains have been cancelled till further notice.
Around 16 pairs of trains, both locals and long-distance, originating from/to Pune to different cities across the country have been suspended in the past month, officials said, adding that eight more pairs going via Pune have been cancelled.
These include Pune-Nagpur, Pune-Amravati, Pune-Ajni, Kolhapur-Nagpur, Dadar-Pandharpur, Dadar-Shirdi, Mumbai-Gadag, Mumbai-Kolhapur, Mumbai-Bidar, Mumbai-Latur, Pune-Ahmedabad Express, Demu Railway between Pune-Phaltan, Lonand-Phaltan etc.
For alternatives, there are seven daily trains including the Hyderabad-Mumbai Special, Chennai-LTT Special, Coimbatore-LTT Special, Udyaan Express, Bhubaneswar-LTT Special, which people can use to travel between Pune and Mumbai after procuring reserved tickets. There are also weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly trains too.
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