350 local trains to ply in Mumbai from Wed for essential staff only

New Delhi: Giving a piece of good news to the people of Mumbai, Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that the Indian Railways has decided to expand its services and will run 350 local trains in Mumbai from Wednesday.

However, he added that the services would be available only to essential workers and not general passengers.

Taking to Twitter, Goyal said that Railways will expand to 350 local trains in Mumbai from Wednesay. “As identified by the state government, essential staff including employees of Centre, IT, GST, Customs, Postal, Nationalised Banks, MBPT, Judiciary, Defence and Raj Bhavan will be allowed in the train. No services yet for general passengers,” he said in a tweet.

As per an official release from the Indian railways, 150 more services will be added to the existing services taking the total to 350 services.

At present, total 200 services (100 DN and 100 UP) are being run in Mumbai line. Out of the total services, 130 services are running between CSMT and Kasara/Karjat/Kalyan/Dombivali/Thane on main line and 70 services are running between CSMT and Panvel on harbour line.

The move from the Railways Ministry comes after the Maharashtra government requested the Centre to allow employees of various Central Government Offices/Establishments, High Courts and Public Sector Banks to use local trains for their travel.

In the initial phase, a total of 1.25 lakh essential staff (including 50 thousand on Western Railway) as identified by the state government are expected to travel by these trains.

Considered as lifeline of Mumbai, these trains serve to over 8 million people on daily basis in the financial capital of the country.