The special night services in the Blue Line are to be run at a new timing soon. The Kolkata Metro Railway has decided to advance the timing of the special night services in the Blue Line by 20 minutes on an experimental basis.
The revised timing would be applicable from next week. According to the city Metro, the special night services in the north-south corridor would be operated at an advanced timing from 24 June on an experimental basis.
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The city Metro had decided to run night services following demands from sections of citizens. The services were started on 24 May and are being operated in both up and down directions leaving Kavi Subhash and Dumdum stations at 11 pm from Monday to Friday. Despite anticipations of a large number of commuters making the most of the facility, the passenger count in the special night services is said to have not been encouraging enough. According to the city Metro office, it has been observed that on an average, only 300 passengers are travelling in each train at night after 11 pm between Dumdum and Kavi Subhash stations. The poor turnout of commuters in the night special trains of the Blue Line is said to be bringing a burden to the accounts of the carrier. As learnt from the city Metro office, in order to run the night special services, Metro Railway has been incurring huge expenses of around Rs 2.7 lakh as running cost along with Rs 50,000 as other expenses.
On the contrary, the revenue earnings from these two trains have been very dismal of only Rs 6,000. It has also been observed that at many stations only one or two tokens on an average are being sold from counters.
Considering the poor passenger count, the Metro authorities have now decided to advance the timings of the special night services by 20 minutes from next week. From 24 June, the experimental night services on Blue Line would be run from Kavi Subhash and Dumdum at 10.40 pm. The services would be available from Monday to Friday and would stop at all stations en-route.
The city Metro, however, has decided not to issue any tokens, smart cards during the night service. Instead, the carrier has requested the commuters to purchase tokens from the Automatic Smart Card Recharge Machines (ASCRM) machines installed at all stations by using UPI payment mode or even avail services by using metro smart cards.
