Festive crowd adds to rush as Blue Line trains run beyond capacity
Times of India | 30 August 2025
Kolkata: The Blue Line (North-South) was less chaotic on Friday compared to Thursday. However, problems persisted as trains continued to travel to the now dysfunctional Kavi Subhash station in New Garia for rake reversal, which is taking at least five minutes of operational time.
Metro Railway will begin laying tracks at the new terminal, Shahid Khudiram at Briji, from Saturday night.
Officials are preparing for the upcoming days, as improvements in Blue Line operations will not happen overnight. With the pujas less than a month away, shoppers have added to the already crowded trains and stations. Typically, special services are added on weekends a month before the pujas, but this time, there is no such news.
Officials stated that 22 services have already been added along the Blue Line from Monday, bringing the total number to 284.
"Over the last two days, scores of people have been seen with shopping bags, boarding the trains from Kalighat, Netaji Bhavan, Esplanade, and Sovabazar. It is obvious that they are puja-shoppers," an RPF personnel said on Friday. This was a day after overcrowding led to an overwhelming rush, when train doors had to be shut manually.
One such train developed a snag on Thursday after several attempts were made to shut the doors, manually or otherwise.
Around 7 pm, the rake was offloaded and taken to Noapara carshed. The break in services had a ripple effect on the following services, and overcrowding of trains and platforms continued until late evening.
On Friday, there were similar instances of metro personnel walking up to shut doors on crowded trains at Maidan, Kalighat, Sovabazar, and some other stations.
"But at least people were not seen tripping or falling on the platforms," an official said. They mentioned that this was nothing but the initial surge of passenger traffic that Metro has faced every time there was a meaningful addition to the services.
A week after East-West Metro's (Green Line) 4.8km Esplanade-Howrah Maidan stretch, linking Kolkata with its twin, Howrah, was commissioned in March last year, footfall in the Blue Line's Esplanade station increased threefold.
"It always takes a few weeks for the initial crowd to stabilise. But this time, a crisis has deepened because of the pre-puja opening of the new lines, especially the Green Line's full run and the Yellow Line's commissioning.
Both lines have interfaces with the Blue Line, which was already stretched as a fallout of shutting the terminal Kavi Subhash," an official explained.
Timetables have been disrupted since July 28 when Metro Railway abruptly shut the Kavi Subhash terminal station after cracks were spotted on the pillars supporting the platforms.
Trains are being short-terminated at Tollygunge to maintain the timetable. Crews are getting confused about driving late trains when the next two motormen have already reported for work.
Crowds are expected to swell further in the upcoming days. However, the operational issues will not be resolved by then, officials admitted. "It will take at least a month to set up the crossover at Shahid Khudiram and streamline the schedule. There's no point adding services at this point," an official said.