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Twenty years after it was introduced to ease the Deccan Queen’s burden, the Mumbai-Pune Pragati Express will chug through Navi Mumbai for the next nine days from Saturday on an experimental basis.

While departing Mumbai, the Pragati Express precedes the Deccan Queen by about 40 minutes. Its first journey via Navi Mumbai on Saturday will, however, involve a train coming from Pune to Mumbai in the morning.

“Navi Mumbai is a fast-growing city and passengers there are always deprived of direct connectivity to Pune. The Mumbai-Pune Pragati Express usually goes via Kalyan, but we have decided to take it through Panvel so as to benefit residents of that township too. The journey would roughly take the same time,” said a senior official.

The train will be taken via Diva to Panvel and from there to Karjat along the Panvel-Karjat route. “We are looking at various factors as to how many passengers we get, how much time it would take, and more importantly, how many trains it intersects while doing so to study whether such runs can be sustained,” said a top official.

The Pragati Express train is now less patronised and taking it to Navi Mumbai will not just benefit the railways, but will also help passengers get a train connectivity to Pune in their backyard — at a basic fare of just Rs40.

The Mumbai-Pune route is very popular with regular travellers, with many state transport buses making several trips along the Yashwantrao Chavan Mumbai-Pune expressway.