The Central Railway (CR) restored 16 air-conditioned (AC) local services on the Thane-Vashi-Panvel section from Thursday. The operation of these services was shut in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These services will run as per their earlier schedule.
These services will run with AC rake from Monday to Friday and with non-AC rakes on Saturday. There will be no AC service on Sundays and holidays, except TNU 65 Thane-Nerul and TNU 66 Nerul-Thane, which will run with non-AC rakes as per the Sunday timetable.
With restoration of these services, the total number of suburban services on the Trans-Harbour section will increase to 262 from the current 246, and the total number of suburban services on Central Railway will increase from the 1,686 services to 1,702, which is 95.94 per cent of pre-Covid levels. At present, only fully vaccinated passengers and essential workers are allowed to travel in local trains.
The CR also announced that Belapur/Nerul to Uran local corridor will also be fully functional by September 2022. Currently, local services run between Belapur/ Nerul-Kharkopar, covering a distance of around 12.4 km, only two stations of the section.
The second phase of the corridor featuring five stations on a 14.6-km stretch is being built between Kharkopar and Uran railway stations.
The 27-km long Belapur/Nerul-Uran line was sanctioned in 1996-97 at an estimated cost of Rs 1,800 crore, with the City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) bearing 66 per cent of expenses.
