By ME Bureau
The lifeline of Mumbai, local (Central and Western Railway) had to suffer losses to the tune of Rs 25 crore due to cancellation and non-operation of the trains due to heavy rains last week. A senior CR official said, "Our cumulative loss over a period of June 19 and 20 is estimated to be Rs 20 crore. This loss includes revenue foregone due to lesser number of passengers, cancellation of long distance trains and freight trains."
He said that the suburban section suffered loss of 4 crore on Central Railway. He said, "According to our estimates, only 9 lakh passengers use the suburban system on June 19 and 25 lakh on June 20 as most preferred to stay indoors because of poor frequency."
The loss from the Passenger Reservation System was estimated to be Rs 4 crore, while Rs 6 crore to Rs 8 crore was because of loss in Freight traffic. The balance was owing to cancellation of trains that led to giving of refunds.
On WR, the losses were estimated to be Rs 5 crore as only two long distance trains were cancelled and also due lesser number of passengers on suburban network.
Due to heavy rains, suburban services on main and harbour line of the Central Railway were stopped for the entire day on June 19. While Western Railway was able to run trains only between Andheri-Virar for major part of the day.
On June 19, as many as 1000 services on CR were cancelled whereas on WR the 335 services were totally cancelled and 564 were partially cancelled. On June 20, the number of cancellation on WR was close ot 60 but CR more than 200 sevices were cancelled. CR also cancelled more than 90 long distance services.
