The fresh curbs imposed by the state government to check the surge in Covid cases have changed the pattern of crowding in public transport.
Local and Metro trains and buses are teeming with passengers in the peak office hours in the morning and evening. But the rest of the day has been reasonably lean for the past few days, said operators.
The pattern suggests that the fear of the “third wave”, driven by the omicron variant, has confined people indoors and only those who have to step out for livelihood are continuing to do so.
Around 10am, the area outside Sealdah station was chock-a-block with people. Trains from Canning, Lakshmikantapur and Namkhana arrived with tens of thousands of people in cramped compartments.
“I had to leave a train in the morning. It was so crowded that even getting a space on the footboard would entail a lot of struggle,” said Ganesh Das, a Sonarpur resident who works at a stationery shop in Baghajatin area.
But as the day progressed, the trains were not as crowded.
The rush was back again in the evening as people geared up to go home. If the morning rush was on trains headed to Sealdah, Howrah, Ballygunge, Dhakuria and other stations in Calcutta, the evening rush was on trains from the stations in the city to the suburbs.
“The schools and colleges are shut. Some offices are not working at full capacity. Even if marginally, the crowd is bound to go down,” said an official of Sealdah division.
Buses in and around Calcutta are also mirroring the same pattern.
The private buses and minibuses headed to central Calcutta have been witnessing a heavy rush in the morning. But for most parts of the remaining day, there are hardly any passengers, said bus owners and drivers.
The absence of sufficient passengers has been financially hurting operators again. Some of them have already started taking buses off the road.
Many people, including those from the suburbs, take buses to reach the public attractions in Calcutta during winter. The closure of these places has taken away a sizeable section of passengers, said bus operators.
“Operators have already started taking buses off road in several routes like Dhulagarh-New Town and Santragachhi-Exide-New Town. Without meaningful financial incentives from the government, it is becoming very difficult to keep running buses and keep incurring losses,” said Rahul Chatterjee of All Bengal Bus Minibus Samannoy Samity.
Metro Railway has also witnessed a sharp dip in footfall since Monday. Officials attributed the decline to the suspension of tokens.
On Monday and Wednesday, the carrier saw around 2.17 and 2.41 lakh passengers respectively. The average daily passenger count had been ranging between 3.5 to 4 lakh in the run-up to the New Year.
“There is a rush during the office hours in the morning and evening. The trains are packed and maintaining social distancing norms is a challenge. But for the rest of the day, the trains are far from full,” said an RPF official.
A Metro official said the crowd had thinned even during the office hours for the past couple of days. “There is a difference of around 10,000 passengers in the 9am to 11am slot,” he said.