Back on track: Over 26 lakh passengers travel in Mumbai local on first day after services resume for all

Local train services in Mumbai carried over 26 lakh passengers on Monday after its services resumed for the general public on February 1. Until now only those who were associated with essential services were allowed to travel. This is the first time the Mumbai local trains were resumed for all after the lockdown in March 2020.

According to the latest data available till 6 pm on February 1, the Western Railway's suburban section had issued over 2.3 lakh tickets and earned about 147.66 lacs. For the same duration, on a previous day, the western railway had sold 1.10 lakh tickets and earned about 39 lakhs. An estimated 11.50 lakh people travelled by suburban section of western railway on the first day of the new permissions being granted between 4 am and 6 pm.

(Photo: PTI)

On the Central Railway, the number of passengers that travelled on the first day upto 6 pm was approximately 14.5 lakhs. It is further expected that another 5-6 lakh passengers would be added to the data by the end of the day. On the previous day, about 10 lakh passengers had travelled between 4 am and 6 pm.

Currently, there are time restrictions in place for the general public to use local trains. They are not allowed to travel the locals between 7 am and 12 noon and between 4 pm and 9 pm, which are considered peak travel hours.

VALIDITY OF SEASON TICKETS EXTENDED

In another bit of good news for people who had bought season tickets for travel on local trains in Mumbai just before lockdown, the railways has made a provision for extending the validity of those tickets. Season tickets are those which passengers buy for a set number of days, say a month, 3 months, 6 months or even a year so that they do not have to keep going to ticket counter every time they have to travel.

Now, one has to go with those paper season tickets to the railway counter and the number of days lost due to lockdown will be revalidated with effect from Feb 1, 2021. In case of a paperless season ticket which was booked through UTS app mobile application, passengers have to update the new version of UTS app and click on the option of 'sync active tickets' so that their season ticket will be automatically be extended up till the number of days lost.

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