Footfall in Mumbai AC locals soars with spiralling temperatures
On May 6, Western Railway (WR) recorded 2.48 lakh commuters, the highest ever daily footfall inside AC locals, with a sale of 32,016 tickets
Mumbai: Caught in the grip of a sweltering heatwave, Mumbaikars are flocking to the city’s air-conditioned local trains. On May 6, Western Railway (WR) recorded 2.48 lakh commuters, the highest ever daily footfall inside AC locals, with a sale of 32,016 tickets. Likewise, Central Railway (CR) ferried 1.41 lakh commuters inside AC locals after selling 18,932 tickets.
WR officials said the popularity of AC local services was increasing and agreed that there was an issue owing to the limited number of AC rakes. WR operates 96 services of AC locals on weekdays, with eight rakes on the Churchgate-Virar route. The authorities confirmed that the number of commuters taking AC locals had increased substantially.
“On Monday, the number of season tickets issued was 3,737, the highest since the launch of AC locals,” said a WR official. “In this month alone, we have already issued 1.61 lakh tickets, which is 30% more than the corresponding period last year.”
From May 1, 1.53 lakh commuters have travelled by fast and slow AC locals on the Virar-Churchgate route every day, a sharp jump from around 1.07 lakh daily commuters in all of May last year. Given the spurt in footfalls, senior WR officials said they had asked the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai for an additional AC rake, which has been kept in abeyance for the last three to four months.
Central Railway is not too far behind, ferrying an average of 91,000 commuters since May 1 on their 66 AC train services. The average for the corresponding period last May was 58,150. CR operates 66 services with six rakes on the CSMT-Kalyan corridor.
“We sold the highest number of tickets at 21,953 and ferried the most number of commuters at 1.49 lakh in AC locals on May 2,” said a CR official. “The daily average revenue from ticket sales of AC locals has increased from an average of ₹24 lakh per day to almost ₹36 lakh now.”
The AC trains are flush with ticketless travellers as well. According to WR data, in April, the ticket-checking staff apprehended over 4,000 ticketless commuters inside AC locals and collected fines of over ₹13 lakh. Overall, 98,000 ticketless travellers were caught in April, and fines collected to the tune of over ₹5 crore.
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