Kolkata, May 11 -- The Green Line (East-West Metro) connecting Howrah Maidan and Salt Lake Sector V has emerged as Kolkata Metro's second-busiest corridor after the Blue Line, with passenger traffic rising sharply following the start of through services across the full corridor.
Metro Railway data for the 2025-26 fiscal showed that the Green Line, featuring the country's first underwater metro tunnel with a 520-metre stretch beneath the Hooghly river, carried 5.3 crore passengers, almost double the combined ridership of 2.8 crore recorded on its two separate sections in 2024-25 - 1.41 crore on the Sealdah-Salt Lake Sector V stretch and 1.39 crore on the Howrah Maidan-Esplanade stretch. The increase stood at around 89.3 per cent, with average weekday ridership at about 1.5 lakh commuters.
The jump in passenger numbers came after commercial services began across the entire 16.6-km East-West Metro corridor between Howrah Maidan and Salt Lake Sector V in August last year, following the inauguration of the underground Sealdah-Esplanade stretch that completed the link.
Since then, travel time between Kolkata and Howrah has reduced significantly, allowing commuters to travel from Howrah to Sector V in around 30 minutes and from Howrah to Sealdah in nearly 11 minutes.
The Blue Line between Dakshineswar and Kavi Subhash continued to remain Kolkata Metro's busiest corridor, carrying 18 crore passengers in 2025-26 so far, with average weekday ridership at about 5.07 lakh commuters. In 2024-25, the corridor carried 18.93 crore passengers. Kolkata Metro recorded an overall ridership of 23.6 crore passengers across all operational corridors in 2025-26 so far, compared with 21.81 crore passengers carried across its four corridors in 2024-25 - an increase of around 8.2 per cent. The Blue and Green Lines together accounted for nearly the entire traffic.
The other corridors continued to contribute marginally to the network's passenger load. The Purple Line (Joka-Majherhat) carried 0.2 crore passengers, while the Yellow Line (Noapara-Jai Hind Bimanbandar) and the Orange Line (Kavi Subhash-Beleghata) recorded 0.1 crore passengers each. Average weekday ridership stood at around 7,000 on the Yellow Line and 5,000 each on the Purple and Orange corridors.
Monthly ridership figures for 2025-26 also indicated sustained growth in commuter traffic. Metro Railway recorded 2.25 crore passengers in September 2025, while monthly passenger numbers remained above two crore in November and December 2025 and in January and March this year.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.