The Ahmedabad Division of Western Railway transported 16.13 lakh passengers in October 2021, which was the most passengers to travel from this division in the last 21 months.
The last time the number of passengers exceeded this mark was 28.39 lakh in February 2020. Since then, there have been only six months when the number of passengers travelling by trains exceeded 10 lakh in a month.
The highest number of passengers travel from Ahmedabad station at Kalupur, while the Ahmedabad Division consists of stations Gandhidham, Palanpur, Bhuj, Mehsana, Viramgam, Maninagar, Samakhayali, Patan, Unjha, Siddhpur, Sabarmati (SBT) and Sabarmati (SBIB) as well.
While 15.19 lakh travelled in March 2020 just before the lockdown, the next time that the passenger count exceeded 1 million was in January 2021 when 10.66 lakh travelled. The trend continued in February with 10.12 passengers travelling from Ahmedabad Division. This dipped in March-April when the number of trains were reduced and the number of passengers dropped again.
Ahmedabad Divisional Railway Manager Tarun Jain said, “While the total number of passengers are less, we must see that the number of reserved passengers have increased more than pre-Covid era. However, people are still travelling less and in keeping with Covid protocols.”
Regarding passenger services, DRM Jain said, “We have increased the average running time of trains which has led to us achieving 98% punctuality.”
3 years of Diwali rush
The drastic reduction in train travel during October, and especially just before Diwali and Chhat Puja, is significant, when compared to earlier years. In October 2019, a whopping 28.69 lakh passengers travelled from Ahmedabad Railway Division. However, after a Covid spike in September 2020, the number of passengers went down to just 5.22 lakh in October 2020 even as Diwali was on November 14.
