Kolkata: 50% passenger cap on public vehicles – Times of India

In the absence of suburban trains, bus operators fear a drop in passenger count.

KOLKATA: Public transport vehicles will allow up to 50% of their total passenger capacity on board from Thursday to minimize the spread of Covid-19. Fewer buses will be out on roads but Metro will run sufficient services.
Metro Railway, which has already announced the plan to reduce north-south services from 238 to 216 from Thursday, has been registering a drop in footfall, recording a daily count of 1.2 lakh nowadays.
From Thursday, the first trains will leave terminal stations at 7.30am instead of 7.20am and the last trains will leave Dakshineswar at 8.48pm instead of 8.58pm and Dum Dum and Kavi Subhas at 9pm instead of 9.10pm.
“As announced earlier, there will be 216 services from Thursday. We will have to further reduce the number of trains in the absence of local trains. Our staff members will have to depend on Eastern Railway and South-Eastern Railway staff specials to come to work. We shall have to match operational hours with these staff specials,” said Metro Railway general manager Manoj Joshi.
From Friday, Metro is likely to start beyond 7.30am and terminate before 9pm. Joshi said, “The state government has told us to run at 50% of passenger capacity. In pre-Covid times, Metro had 2,000 passengers a train at a given point of time. Now, the count has come down to 500 passengers, which is around 25% of our capacity.”
Officials, however, reassured that the number of services would continue to be enough to accommodate the current demand.
“Fewer people are travelling these days. We want to run enough trains to maintain physical distancing,” an official said. The number of buses—both state transport undertakings (STUs) and private—will, however, be down to 50%. Currently, 1,000 STU and 2,000 private buses ply in Kolkata.
“We have asked the route committees to introduce an alternate-day-run system so that all bus operators can earn their living,” said a transport department official. The transport directorate is also facilitating sanitization of buses on every route.
In the absence of suburban trains, bus operators fear a drop in passenger count.
“Buses and trains are dependent on each other. Most bus terminuses are located near railway stations. If local trains don’t operate, commute demand for buses will automatically go down,” said Tapan Bandyopadhyay, secretary of the Joint Council of Bus Syndicates. In the next few days, STUs and private bus operators will gauge the demand vis-a-vis routes and adjust frequency of services.
Though there is no restriction on taxis and autos, operators said the number of vehicles would depend on demand as well. Last year, cabs played a crucial role in ferrying patients and maintaining supply line for medicines.
This time, too, cabs may play similar role. Restrictions on the number of auto passengers may be reimposed. Currently, around 40,000 cabs operate in the city.
If the demand is low, a large number of taxis will automatically go off the road. Similarly, autos on a route may run on alternate days, giving opportunity to all operators to earn a living.