Metro carried 1.9 cr riders in month it added muscle
Times of India | 4 September 2025
Kolkata: The Metro network carried 1.9 crore passengers in Aug, nearly 15-20 lakh more passengers than in an average month prior to the addition of two new sections and a new line on Aug 22.
The Metro officials expect the figure to easily cross 2 crore in Sept.
While the network, comprising the full Blue Line, Green Line in two disjointed sections, and short stretches of the Purple and Orange lines, clocked 1.2 crore passengers in the first three weeks last month, 65.5 lakh commuters were added in the next 10 days. The full Sealdah-Esplanade stretch of the Green Line became commercially operational only after 6 pm on Aug 22, while the Yellow Line and the extended Orange Line opened to passengers on Aug 25.
These two lines, along with the Purple Line, are shut during weekends.
"Following the commencement of the additional sections in the Green and Orange Line and the commissioning of the Yellow Line, the average daily commuter count has gone up from 5.8 lakh to 6.6 lakh. As people become more familiar with the integrated metro network and the interchanges at Esplanade and Noapara, this will rise further," a Metro official said.
In Aug, Metro Railway, which runs the city's rapid transit network, also earned Rs 30 crore, up from around Rs 27 crore-Rs 28 crore in previous months. This translates to a revenue increase from Rs 91 lakh per day to Rs 1.1 crore per day. In Sept, this is expected to breach Rs 33 crore.
The commissioning of the new stretches and a new line also increased digital payment usage. Of Rs 19 crore that Metro earned in the first 21 days, Rs 6.8 crore or 35.8% was by way of digital payment.
In the next 10 days, Rs 4.2 crore out of Rs 11 crore — or 38.2% — was by way of digital payment.
The Yellow Line has carried nearly twice the passengers of the now 10km Orange Line. Surprisingly, the Purple Line, dubbed a toy train by many in Behala, has consistently outperformed the Orange Line. On Aug 21 (the day before the three new lines were flagged off), the Purple Line's ridership was 5,634 against the Orange Line's (then spanning 5.4 km) 1,915.
On Aug 25, 5,643 passengers used the Purple Line, while the Orange Line had only 4,031 passengers.
That day, all three new lines operated together for the first time.
Shortly after the PM launched the three lines on Aug 22, the most important and the shortest of the three new sections – Green Line's last 2.6 km Esplanade-Sealdah – started running across the entire 16.6 km stretch from Sector V to Howrah Maidan, via the Hooghly river.
On that day, there was a 12,000 jump in Green Line passengers between the first full run at 6.05 pm and the last train at 9.45 pm.
When the Yellow Line's Phase I and Orange Line's Phase II (with 4.4 km Ruby-Metropolitan added) started their first runs on Aug 25, the former recorded 8,353 passengers and the latter 4,031 riders. The Purple Line, without extension, registered 6,242 riders.