India’s Mumbai to resume train services

Bloomberg

Mumbai will restart commuter train services for fully vaccinated residents from Sunday, a move that could tackle traffic jams that are popping up as Covid-19 cases drop off but also one that risks transmitting the virus across India’s financial hub.
Services had been halted since March 2020, making it the longest shutdown for a railway system that has survived floods, bomb blasts and power outages with only a day or two of suspensions. While they had gradually re-opened for essential workers, only 1.6 million used the Central Line daily, for instance, about a fourth of its passenger load before the virus struck.
Authorities had feared contagion because Mumbai’s three railway lines on a typical day ferry more than 8 million people, with coaches so crowded that latecomers hang out of doorways. The trains are the city’s main artery; they run from the teeming suburbs to the glass-and-concrete financial districts midtown, before traversing colonial-era docklands that were funded by the opium trade to eventually reach the old neighborhoods housing the stock exchange and central bank.
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