The Kolkata Metro Railway on Wednesday announced that the timings for its special night service along the North-South corridor will be advanced by 20 minutes from June 24.

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The Metro Railway hopes that the number of commuters availing the service will rise if the timing is advanced.

Instead of 11 pm, the trains will now run from 10.40 pm from both Kavi Subhas and Dum Dum metro stations on an experimental basis from Monday to Friday, a statement said.

The special trains were being run at 11 pm from both ends five days a week from May 24.

"Metro Railway has been running a special service on the blue line on an experimental basis at 11 pm. Though the service was introduced with the hope that it would cater to a large number of people, it has been observed that the night service is not being patronised by the Metro commuters. As a result, on an average only 300 passengers are travelling in each train at night after 11 pm between Dum Dum and Kavi Subhash," the statement said.

"To run the service, Metro Railway has been incurring huge expenses -- around Rs. 2.7 lakh daily as running cost along with Rs 50,000 as other expenses, but in return revenue earnings from these two trains have been very dismal at only Rs 6,000 per day. It has also been observed that in many stations only one or two tokens on an average were being sold from counters to the commuters," Kolkata Metro spokesperson Kaushik Mitra said.

It seems that the 11 pm service is too late for commuters and it is hoped that with advancement of timings, more people will avail the service, he said.

Mitra said ticket counters will not remain open for the night service from June 24 and passengers can purchase tokens from ASCRM machines installed at the stations by using UPI payment mode.
Also, those having Kolkata Metro smartcards can also avail the special service, he said.

In the regular service, the last trains leave Dum Dum and Kavi Subhas at 9.40 pm.

With the advancement in timings, the gap between regular and special services has reduced to one hour from the previous one hour and twenty minutes.