Green Line pushes up Blue Line footfall at Esplanade stn by 43%
Times of India | 5 September 2025
Kolkata: The Green Line has increased the Blue Line's footfall at the Esplanade station by 43%. The average footfall at the Esplanade metro station, which serves as an interchange between the Blue (North-South) and Green (East-West Metro) lines, has increased from a daily average of around 70,000 to approximately 1 lakh.
On Aug 22, PM Narendra Modi introduced two new sections and a new metro line. The most crucial addition among these was the East-West Metro's last leg, the 2.6km Esplanade-Sealdah section, which linked the previously disjointed 9.2km Sector V-Sealdah and the 4.8km Esplanade-Howrah Maidan sections. Shortly after the flag-off, the Green Line began its full 16.6km run from Sector V to Howrah Maidan. Since then, trains on both the Green and Blue lines have been running packed, with platforms teeming with people even during lean hours.
The situation has become most chaotic at the Blue Line's 41-year-old Esplanade station.
"The footfall at the Esplanade station was around 70,000 on average before the Green Line's full run began on Aug 22," an official informed. From Aug 25, the first Monday for the Green Line's full operations and the Yellow Line's (Noapara-Airport) maiden operations, the Blue Line's Esplanade station saw a steep surge, registering a footfall of 1,01,439 and 51,713 passengers that day.
On Aug 26, footfall recorded at the Blue Line's Esplanade station was 98,163.
The next day, the station recorded 95,968 footfall and 57,040 passengers. Again, on Aug 28, the station registered a footfall of 1,08,078 and a passenger count of 57,040. Except for weekends, the station has been recording more than a lakh footfall every day, an official said.
The footfall of a station is deduced by adding the total number of QR-coded tickets and tokens sold, QR-coded tickets and tokens swiped by exiting passengers, and entries and exits recorded by smart card users.
The number of passengers is the total of QR-coded and token tickets sold and exits recorded by smart card users.
Officials said the Blue Line's Dum Dum station is witnessing similar daily footfall (around 1 lakh or slightly more), but the crowding at the surface station was not as suffocating as at the Blue Line's Esplanade station.
The crowding at most of the 12 Green Line stations (except stations like Sector V and Howrah Maidan) is less severe as they are spacious and built in anticipation of the huge footfall that the city's Line 2 would draw. In comparison, Blue Line stations like Esplanade are much smaller. In fact, the Blue Line's Esplanade station, which wasn't originally planned as an interchange between the two crucial corridors (Blue and Green), is less than a third of the size of the sprawling 30,000 sqm Green Line's Esplanade station.