Mumbai Metro’s Ghatkopar-Versova line to restart from Monday
Mumbai:
Metro services in Mumbai, closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus lockdown, will reopen on Monday with the Ghatkopar-Versova Metro One line, which was the only functional line before the national lockdown in March, resuming operations.
SOPs (Standard Operating Protocols) for passengers, which will be subject to thermal checks upon entering stations, will include social distancing: images of the interior of coaches show stickers highlighting where you can sit or stand, and the use of face masks absolutely. times, whether in trains or on the platform.
Other SOPs will include limiting passengers on each four-car train to 300 (against a maximum of 1,500), an emphasis on cashless transactions when purchasing tickets, and maintaining a constant temperature (between 25 and 27 degrees Celsius) inside the cars.
Also, only 200 trains will run between 8 am and 8:30 am every day; Before Covid, up to 450 trains were running every day.
“We have allowed only 300 people to travel at a time to take care of social distancing. As the crowds increase, things will change. Also, instead of giving tokens, people will get paper tickets, so the risk of infection it is limited. People will be encouraged to use the facilities for online payment, “said Abhay Kumar Mishra, CEO of Mumbai Metro.
Seats have been marked to ensure social distancing among Mumbai subway passengers
The decision to restart metro services in the city was made earlier this week, and the Uddhav Thackeray government hopes this will ease pressure on conventional public transportation such as local buses, as Mumbai tries to return to the normalcy amid the Covid pandemic.
Metro services across India have been restarted in phases following the green light from the center last month. The Delhi Metro, the country’s largest network, began limited operations on September 7 with around 7,500 passengers on the first shift.
Similarly, metro services in several other cities, including Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Hyderabad, and Kolkata, have also started operating after months of closure.
Maharashtra remains the state most affected by the Covid pandemic. The state reported more than 10,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, according to data from the Health Ministry this morning.
The good news, however, is that the active case load dropped by around 4,400 after more than 14,000 recoveries were recorded in the same period.
Overall, India has recorded almost 75 lakh cases, of which 1.14 lakh are deaths. However, the central government said on Sunday that the country had “crossed the Covid peak.”
.
