Metro Railway ferried around 1.92 lakh passengers on Monday, the most since the resumption of commercial services on September 14 and the first day without e-passes.

For the past several weekdays, the count had been in the range of 1.7 lakh. The carrier had ferried around 1.82 lakh passengers on January 13, the highest before Monday.

The number of trains also went up to 240 from Monday, up from 228, to ease the expected rise in the number of passengers. The office hours were busy but the non-rush hour trains ferried fewer passengers than they used to during pre-Covid times.

Metro officials said the count was not expected to be much above 200,000 in the near future because schools and colleges were shut and tokens were still suspended.

“Our average passenger load per train used to be above 2,000 before the pandemic. Now, it is not expected to go beyond 850. We are confident of being able to maintain social distancing norms with that count,” said an official.

Before the pandemic, the carrier ran 288 trains and ferried around 6 lakh passengers every day.

Since commercial services resumed on September 14, many entry/exit gates across the stations in the north-south corridor had been shut to ensure crowd control.

Five of such gates were opened on Monday.

“The abolition of e-passes is expected to lead to a gradual rise in the number of passengers. Following social distancing protocols is still imperative. We have opened some more gates on Monday for better crowd control and will open more in phases if needed,” Metro spokesperson Indrani Banerjee said.

The e-pass system had been effective in controlling the number of passengers, though some people accused it of being “discriminatory”. The carrier had been gradually narrowing the e-pass window before completely doing away with it from Monday.