Passenger flow: ER and Metro prioritise tube repairs

Kolkata: In an effort to improve passenger movement from the Howrah railway station to the East-West Metro station located within it, Metro Railway and Eastern Railway jointly inspected the station on Friday.

The Joka-Esplanade (Purple) line, the New Garia-Ruby (Orange) line and the Esplanade-Howrah Maidan line of East-West Metro all began service last Friday.

Metro Railway General Manager P. Uday Kumar Reddy said, “We inspected the new green line (East-West Metro) to see what further needs to be done so that there is no crisscross movement of commuters.”
He and ER GM Milind K. Deouskar headed a team of officials who examined the status of the underground project, which is now under development and will connect the Metro station to the train station.
The East-West Metro segment, which connects Kolkata and Howrah via India’s first transit tunnels under the Hooghly, is one of the three lines that Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially opened on March 6. It has seen heavy foot traffic. 3.4 lakh commuters have utilised it up to this point. However, only 4,000 and 8,000 riders, respectively, made use of the orange and purple lines. Both lines are closed on weekends. On Sundays, East-West Metro is closed.
The GM said that it was surprising how many people were using the Orange and Purple lines, particularly the latter. Currently, the Purple Line sees 800 passengers per day on average. It used to be less than 500. We’re not sure whether the autonomous signalling system or communication-based train control will make a difference, according to Reddy. Trains are now operating on both routes at 20-minute intervals.
The inspection team on Friday included Soumitra Majumdar, the main chief commercial manager of ER, DRM, Howrah Sanjeev Kumar, and representatives from KMRC, the E-WMetro implementation agency.