‘20% drop in occupancy in buses plying from Howrah Maidan & Howrah Stn to Esplanade’
Private bus routes from Howrah Maidan and Howrah Station to Esplanade suffer as occupancy goes down by 20 per cent. “The real impact can be identified only after 15 days or a month when the joyride in Howrah Maidan to Esplanade section of EastWest Metro corridor ends,” a private bus operator Rahul Chatterjee said.
The commercial services in the stretch started from March 15. Roughly 50,000 commuters have been availing the Metro services till date. Till March 21, it recorded more than 3,40,000 footfalls. Initially, the footfall was around 60,000 to 70,000 but gradually it came down to 50,000.
However, the operation of the Metro in this stretch has adversely affected the bus and ferry services. The suburban passengers whose office
is in BBD Bagh or Dharamtala, used to earlier either take launch to Fairlie and walk to their workplace or get down at Babughat and take bus to Dharamtala costing an additional of Rs 10. Other passengers from Howrah Maidan or station who used to avail buses have also slowly transitioned to Metro usage.
Bus routes like C which runs from Howrah Maidan to Park Street via Dharamtala and smaller routes which terminate at Esplanade and originate from Tikiapara and Kadamtala have been the sufferer. While it takes around 45 minutes to reach Esplanade from Howrah Station and Howrah Maidan by bus, it takes only 10 minutes by
Metro. The cost incurred by the passengers is also less.
Chatterjee is still hopeful. “Even when the Blue Line was extended, parallel bus services were still operational. Passengers had dropped and hence the number of buses, but it did not diminish,” he said. Though optimistic that the same would ply in the other routes where Metro is expanding, he also feels that an alternative or a policy needs to be stressed upon to ensure buses co-exist. One possible alternative for private and public operators would be to focus more on last mile connectivity, which means providing routes from Metro stations to places where Metro routes have not reached yet. For instance, Rabindra Sarobar Metro Station to Golf Green route. Another private bus operator Titu Saha said that the state needs to rearrange its policy with regards to transport arrangements considering the increasing Metro routes. Currently, there are four Metro Corridors operational – Blue Line (Kavi Subhash to Dakshineswar), Green Line (Howrah Maidan to Esplanade and Sealdah to Salt Lake Sector V), Purple Line (Joka to Majerhat) and Orange Line (Kavi Subhash to Hemanta Mukhopadhyay for Ruby More).