But sheds extra services, reverts to old routine to manage crowd
Times of India | 4 September 2025
Kolkata: Metro Railway on Wednesday began implementing some of its decisions in response to the extreme crowd pressure it has been facing, mostly on the Blue (North-South) Line, since the three new metro lines opened on Aug 22.
The Blue Line that has been city's transportation lifeline for four decades was bearing the brunt of overcrowding and irregular services following the Esplanade interface with the full Green Line operations and the closure of its terminal station at New Garia.
Among the first actions Metro took was to revert to its 262 (131 in each direction) services from 284. From Aug 22, when all three new lines operated together for the first time, Metro had been running 22 services and reduced the 6-minute peak-hour frequencies to 5 minutes, in anticipation of the passenger rush that the new lines would bring.
Officials confessed that they were facing major operational challenges to maintain the 284 services and the reduced 5-minute peak-hour frequencies. The Blue Line was already under strain, running truncated operations till its second last southern station, Shahid Khudiram, since the terminal Kavi Subhash station was shut indefinitely on July 28. Since Aug 22, passengers squeezed themselves into the already overcrowded trains, doors of which could not be shut in a single attempt.
The special Blue Line night trains were suspended from Wednesday to facilitate work to build a crossover at the new Shahid Khudiram terminal. The authorities are trying to complete building the crossover before the pujas.
Another step taken to ease the passenger load was to segregate the two lines. Ever since the Yellow Line opened on Aug 22, Noapara-bound were made to pull in on platform 3, which is an island platform, with platform 2 on the other side, so that passengers could travel on the same train to Shahid Khudiram without disembarking at Noapara.
On Wednesday, the system changed. Trains were reserved for the Yellow Line, and passengers were seen getting on different trains – one from Jai Hind station to Noapara, and another from Noapara to Shahid Khudiram. "This helped us manage our timetable better. Ever since the Yellow Line opened, the train headed for Shahid Khudiram had to wait for 10-20 minutes at Noapara for signal clearance," said an official.
The stations appeared less chaotic on Wednesday, even as trains were still stopping at Tollygunge, catching commuters headed for Shahid Khudiram unawares. "This train will not go to Shahid Khudiram," the passenger address system (PAS) blared inside a train that reached Tollygunge at 4.04 pm. "We have been going through a harrowing time since Aug 22," said Anirban Ganguly, a commuter at Esplanade. "Today, I bought a ticket from Sovabazar to Kudghat (Netaji metro station), only to find the train terminating at Tollygunge," said Neelina Sarkar, a saleswoman.