Awaiting directives from the Maharashtra government on modalities, on Sunday, Central Railway adds 552 suburban services and Western Railway adds 201 to reduce crowding of essential workers and women commuters
The latest move comes in an attempt to have better social distancing. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
Central and Western Railway added services over the weekend to reduce overcrowding and maintain social distancing, even as it awaited directives from the state government With this, local train services have now been restored to almost 88 per cent of the pre-pandemic period but with just 10% of commuters using them. The latest addition is in effect from Monday.
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The move comes ahead of a meeting with state government officials regarding throwing open suburban services to all expected to take place in the next few days.
At the time of going to the press, railway officials said they had not received an update on a meeting that had been scheduled for Monday. A railway spokesperson said that they had given inputs as asked by the state government on the same day and were hoping that it would reply soon to plan for total reopening.
Currently, 8.5 lakh people are travelling in local trains, as opposed to the pre-COVID 80 lakh people.
"Additional 552 suburban services have been added on CR to the 1,020, taking the total to 1,572 services and additional 201 suburban services have been added to the 1,000 on WR, taking the total to 1,201," a spokesperson said on Sunday.
Before COVID-19, the WR used to run 1,367 suburban trains and the CR used to run 1,774 services. With the latest addition, the services are slowly reaching their pre-COVID numbers before any decision on allowing everyone on trains is taken. Now the CR has 202 trains which are not running and the WR has 166 services which are not running.
On Sunday, the CR and WR started operating total 2,020 suburban services — with 610 services having been added to the 1,410 that had been running.While the CR had added 314 suburban services to the 706 services running till Saturday, the WR had added 296 suburban services to the 704 already running.
"Categories as identified by the state government, all ladies (between 11 am and 3 pm and after 7 pm), practising lawyers and registered clerks of lawyers during timings as specified should travel in these special trains, as permitted by the government of Maharashtra," a spokesperson said.
As a part of the unanimously decided SOP, a maximum of 700 passengers can be seated in a 12 car EMU rake as per social distancing norms against 1,200 passengers that could be seated earlier.
866
No. of new services CR added over Saturday and Sunday
497
No. of new services WR added over Saturday and Sunday
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