Oldest metro adds ops but still beaten by crowd surge
Times of India | 26 August 2025
Kolkata: On Monday, Metro Railway added 22 additional services to the Blue Line, anticipating a surge in traffic following its integration with a fully operational Green Line. This meant increased frequency, with the gap between trains during peak hours reduced from 6 minutes to 5. However, this did little to relieve commuters on the alignment, particularly for those boarding or alighting at Esplanade station. It felt like Durga Puja on Monday, nearly a month ahead of the festival, when even getting a toehold is a challenge in metro coaches. The Green Line interfaces with the North-South or Blue Line at Esplanade, which was teeming with people all day.
"It is so suffocating to board a Blue Line train from Esplanade after a relatively more comfortable journey on the Green Line," said Madhumita Sen, a Salt Lake resident, who used the Esplanade interchange on Monday morning to take her sons to St Xavier's School. "I hope it will be better when I come back in the afternoon to pick up my sons from school," she added.
Naina Agarwal, a resident of Howrah Maidan, echoed this sentiment. She also used Esplanade interchange to pick up her daughters, Disha and Davina, students at Loreto School, in the afternoon. "I could hardly feel the AC in the short stretch we travelled to Esplanade to switch metro lines to Howrah. It felt like a local train. There was no seat, and the three of us could barely stand," Agarwal said. | Gold Rates Today in Kolkata | Silver Rates Today in KolkataThe addition of more services did not make much of a difference to commuters as doors were not getting shut due to overcrowding during peak hours. The situation was slightly different during non-rush hours at the Esplanade station, as Metro and RPF personnel faced the most difficult time controlling the crowd.
"With East-West Metro's missing link finally getting established, the city's three bustling transport hubs are now interconnected. The crowd at Esplanade proves that the city commuter's travelling options have multiplied exponentially," a Metro official said. From early morning, passengers from Sector V were alighting at Sealdah or Howrah railway station to proceed to the city's nerve centre, Esplanade, and access the Blue Line to go their different ways.
"The superior Green Line stations are large, with anticipation of huge footfalls. But the Blue Line's Esplanade station is much smaller in area, with hardly any space for extra ticket counters or automatic vending machines," an official said. TOI reported on March 25, 2024, that the key Blue Line station recorded a three-fold jump in ticket sales since the E-W Metro's truncated Green Line section from Esplanade to Howrah Maidan became operational on March 15, 2024.