Indian Railways will soon run regular non-AC long distance trains catering to meet the demand of lower income passengers, particularly migrant workers from regions such as eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Bengal and Jharkhand to cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai and parts of Punjab.
As per sources, the train services on these routes will start before the next Lok Sabha election in a move that is expect to take forward the government’s pro-poor approach in an election year.
Officials said the routes have identified after studying the pattern of waitlist tickets and assessment of origin-destination of high numbers of passengers.
As per official :
“In the past nine years, the railways has laid nearly 20,000 route km of new tracks. So, we have got additional capacity to run more trains. We have considered the historical data and origin-destination patterns. These are the most popular routes. The trains will run from areas that send a huge number of migrant workforce to employment hubs,” said an .
After the Covid-19 outbreak, the railways had to run hundreds of special Shramik Express trains on these routes to bring back migrant workers home from big cities.
Other railway official said the national transporter is also taking steps to make the travel comfortable and safe by replacing the remaining 20,000-odd old (ICF) coaches with LHB coaches in the next three years, which are safer.
In the next 4-5 years, all the coaches will also have new features such as “plug doors” to prevent accidents like passengers falling off as the trains won’t start unless the doors are shut.
The system will be on fail safe principle, meaning in case of a crash or emergency, the doors will open automatically.
The official said that the railways will also reduce the types of passenger coaches on its network to two from the current range of 28.
“In the next 5-6 years, there will only be Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) and Vande Bharat type coaches on the Indian Railways. This will help us manage maintenance costs,” as per official added while giving the example of how low cost airlines have follow this model and become profitable.
The Indian Railways will now serve healthy and hygienic food at affordable prices to passengers in general coaches.
These will be provide through extend service counters locate near these coaches at platforms and the “economy meals” price will be set at Rs 20 and “snack meal” at Rs 50, the national transporter said.
It wil also sell package water and the counters serving meals would be on platforms align with the general coaches.
While the “economy meal” has 7 ‘pooris’ with dry ‘aaloo’ and pickle for a price of Rs 20, the “snack meal” will be an assortment of Indian food such as rice, rajma, chhole, khichdi kulche, bhature, pao-bhaji and masala dosa.
