KOLKATA: Metro Railway is gradually emerging from the pandemic’s shadow, having grossed Rs 48.5 crore revenue in the first seven months of the current fiscal, against the meagre Rs 42.6 crore it had earned in 2020-21. Between April and October this year, Metro has clocked 3 crore passenger journeys against 2.6 crore passengers ferried last year.
“Kolkata’s Metro is back on the revival path. It showed the way forward in crowd management during Covid by introducing e-passes to ensure distancing inside the coaches. Metro has now brought back tokens and also started QR-coded tickets. Globally, metro rail systems are facing passenger hesitancy in the pandemic, but our Metro, which is the backbone of the city’s public transport, has recovered ridership on a sequential basis — from 20,000 on the first day of post-lockdown resumption to its current 3.7 lakhs daily footfall,” said Sanjay Chatterjee, founder of Ideation Technology Solutions that works with World Bank for Kolkata’s transport and logistics projects.
