Kolkata Metro: Commuter count rises by 1 lakh in one day after new links; Green Line adds 80,000, Blue Line earnings cross Rs 1 crore
Times of India | 27 August 2025
Kolkata Metro sees a surge in ridership after the opening of three new lines KOLKATA: The three new links have added 1 lakh riders to Kolkata Metro's daily commuter count with the Green Line (East-West Metro) clocking an additional 80,000 passengers, Yellow Line (Noapara-airport) 7,000 and Blue Line (North-South) 10,000 rider per day. The Orange Line along EM Bypass added another 2,500, taking the combined metro ridership to around 8 lakh, Metro Railway officials said. On Monday, three days after services began on the entire 16.6-km stretch between Sector V and Howrah Maidan, the Green Line recorded 1.9 lakh passengers, up from 1.1 lakh the previous Monday when the line was operational in two disjointed sections - Sector V to Sealdah and Esplanade to Howrah Maidan. This also resulted in daily earnings shooting up to Rs 38.8 lakh from Rs 17.3 lakh, an indication that more people took longer rides on the section. Consequently, the average fare per passenger jumped to Rs 20.8 from Rs 15.5 on Aug 18.
| Gold Rates Today in Kolkata | Silver Rates Today in KolkataBlue Line earnings cross 1cr mark In the Blue Line, which began operations more than four decades ago, passenger count increased to 5.8 lakh on Aug 25 from 5.7 lakh on Augt 18, taking passenger earnings beyond Rs 1 crore from Rs 89.5 lakh a week ago. Earnings per passenger inched up from Rs 15.8 to Rs 17.2. "There is a steep surge in daily footfall, especially along the Green Line," said an official, adding that the Blue Line ridership will jump further during the pre-Puja and Puja days. "The upward trend in daily passenger count will drop a little post-Pujas, but it is easy to deduce that we are expecting greater rush in the coming days," he said. The passenger count on the North-South Blue Line, which would be around 6.5 lakh per day before the pandemic, has generally been hovering around 5.5 lakh per day since the launch of East-West Metro's 4.8 km Esplanade-Howrah Maidan in March 2024. The Blue Line's ridership is now expected to cross 6 lakhs daily as more passengers use its interfaces with the Green and Yellow lines at Esplanade and Noapara respectively. Last week, in the run-up to the inauguration of the three new segments, Metro Railway projected a daily passenger count of 9.5 lakh for the city's rapid transit network.
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