300 fined for not wearing masks, even as ridership numbers mirror Day 1 figures
Commuters alight from a local train at Dadar railway station on Tuesday. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
The number of commuters on the Mumbai suburban railway remained steady on the second day since the government allowed the general public on board the local trains. Western Railway and Central Railway together recorded a footfall of 32 lakh. With the pandemic still far from over, more passengers are opting to travel via AC locals to avoid crowding.
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A Senior CR official said the first day of reopening of locals for all saw a massive spike in the number of bookings for passes of air-conditioned local trains.
“On CR, the sale of season tickets [passes] was five times higher than that of the regular tickets on Monday. An average of seven to eight AC local passes were sold daily until January 31 [when only essential workers and women were allowed to travel]. However, yesterday, the daily bookings of passes jumped to 46. This was in addition to the bookings of single-journey tickets. People now seem to be taking the AC local trains to avoid crowds, and it’s a good sign,” the official said on Tuesday.
The performance of AC locals on WR too was good.
The flow of commuters on regular local trains remained steady throughout Tuesday. About 20 lakh passengers travelled on CR, while 12 lakh commuted on WR.
Despite an increase in the number of passengers on stations across the city after several months, surveillance of commuters found in violation of COVID-19 protocols continued.
In CR’s Mumbai division, railway officials with the help of the BMC members fined 278 passengers for not wearing masks, and each of them had to pay a penalty of R200. As far as ticketless travellers were concerned, a total of 1,700 commuters were caught on Tuesday and fines worth Rs 5.5 lakh were collected. At Dadar alone, 400 commuters were fined, with the total penalty reaching as much as Rs 89,000.
46
No. of AC local passes booked on Monday
8
No. of AC local passes booked daily till Jan 31, 2020
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