Kolkata's Green Line Metro Surpasses 1.9 Lakh Daily Riders

Kolkata: The East-West Metro, affectionately known as the Green Line, has witnessed a steady increase in ridership, with 1.9 lakh passengers using the line on Thursday. The Sector V-Howrah Maidan corridor is projected to see 2.3 lakh daily riders by Friday.

On Thursday, the Metro Railway earned around Rs 32 lakh from the corridor. The projected earnings for Friday were estimated to be around Rs 36 lakh. Despite a slight drop in ridership due to many people staying home for Ganesh Puja, the usual weekday crowd returned on Friday. Despite several crowd-control measures, station personnel struggled to manage the queues and reduce congestion in the paid areas.

Stations like Howrah Maidan, Howrah, Sealdah, and Sector V remained busy even outside peak hours. From morning till evening, packed trains ran from Sector V to Howrah Maidan, both of which are smaller stations compared to the spacious ones like Howrah and Sealdah. While many passengers switched to mobile apps and procured tickets before entering the stations, and several bought smartcards, many still preferred paying cash and getting physical tickets from the counters.

The vending machine queues were also long. Footfalls have more than doubled in stations like Howrah, Sealdah, and Sector V. The daily footfall hovers around 83,000-85,000 in both stations. Sector V, which used to register around 12,000 daily footfalls, has been recording around 45,000 passenger counts every day. Sales in the busy stations have increased threefold compared to the previous week when the East-West Metro ran in two disjointed sections.

Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the last 2.6 km leg between Esplanade and Sealdah on Friday, the Green Line could run its full 16.6 km between Sector V and Sealdah. The jump in daily ridership following the commissioning of the three new metro stretches on Monday was expected. On Monday, commuter counts rose by 1 lakh, with the Green Line recording 187,041 passengers against the previous Monday's 111,265. On the first working day of the week, which was also the day the three new lines operated together for the first time, Metro Railway clocked around 7.7 lakh ridership, including 5,67,980 on the Blue Line, which interfaces with the Green Line at Esplanade.

The Green Line's earnings shot up by 124% compared to the days before the Esplanade-Sealdah section was operational. This significant increase in ridership and revenue underscores the importance of the Green Line in Kolkata's urban transportation network.