With summer heat already being felt by Mumbaikars, the railways are expecting more passengers to migrate to AC locals. In fact on CR the total average number of passengers commuting in AC local has gone up from 55 per service to 376 passengers per service. Even WR is seeing good response. This comes at a time when railways are seeing stray instances of windows of AC locals being damaged.
According to officials from Central Railway, they are seeing tremendous response from passengers using the AC local ever since they are running it on the fast corridor on the Main line. At present the CR authorities are running 60 services with each seeing 376 passengers. Previously they were operating 42 services of AC local and behind each service 55 passengers were travelling.
“What we have observed is that people travelling on the Main line are using the AC locals and demand has improved as compared to those on Harbour line. With summer approaching, we expect this demand to improve,” said a CR official.
From March 1-7, there were 87178 passengers who travelled in AC local on Journey tickets and Season passes. Out of these; 74814 passengers or 85.81 percent of them were travelling on the CSMT-Kalyan/Titwala/Badlapur route. This shows that the introduction of 34 new AC local train services seem to have helped the railways garner demand from people.
On February 21, around 7497 passengers who travelled inside 60 AC train services which comes to 125 passengers per service. This used to be 2460 passengers average per day travelling inside 42 services since February 1, that comes to around 58 passengers per service. Now the daily passenger count is 376 per service as on March 7. The CR authorities were operating 42 services of AC locals until February 18. This was part of 1774 services which has now increased to 1810 services including these 60 AC local services.
On the Western Railway too, from March 1-8, there have been 113739 passengers who have travelled inside AC local. They are part of 11.82 lakh passengers who have travelled in the current year since January. The officials claim that they are operating 28 services which includes 8 services which is common on the Harbour line.
