TO CLEAR the extra rush of essential services workers, the Western Railway (WR) has decided to run six additional local trains services from September 28. Of these, two will be reserved for women commuters. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, both the WR and Central Railway (CR) divisions are not operating local trains to its full capacity. While WR runs 500 services each day, CR operates 423 services daily. Recently, videos of overcrowded suburban trains without any semblance of social distancing had gone viral on social media. To avoid such situations, the WR has decided to add six more local services to its corridor, officials said. The CR, too, had added 68 local services recently. Prior to lockdown, the CR and WR together used to run nearly 3,000 local train services to ferry around 85 lakh commuters daily. Currently, they carry nearly 10 lakh commuters daily.
