NEW DELHI: Ongoing festive season doesn’t seem to have brought good business for railways. Railways passenger ticket booking fell by 12 percent and with 16.5 lakh fewer passengers traveling by train compared to last year during Oct 1-10.
Sections where railways have introduced surge pricing from September 9 this year also saw the downward turn with three lakh fewer passengers traveling by 3AC and 1.5 lakh lesser opting for 2AC births in nearly 13000 trains that railways run every day. Sleeper class was badly affected with nearly 10 lakh passengers opting for other modes of transport.
Despite surge pricing the revenue fell by 7.45 percent which comes out to be 57.6 crores during ten days. In a worrying trend, Railways has seen the slump in freight earnings by nearly 7 percent with below target transportation of coal, iron ore and in other segments.
Several measures have been taken in the past months to improve freight earnings but nothing seems to have so far benefitted the government run transporter. Railway has rationalized freight rates seeing the competitive markets and to gain from road sector which has been cutting railways freight share.
After staying way from increasing rail fare for last two-and-half year, Railway last month announced to introduce flex pricing thus increasing fare by 50 percent in -- Rajdhani, Duronto, and Shatabdi. Under the new formula, base fares increase from 10 percent to 50 percent with every 10 percent of berths booked.
Railway is expecting to earn Rs 500 crore in the current financial year from new fare structure and hopes it will pick up in days to come.
“Our revenue in passenger fare segment has gone down but we have been able to earn Rs 100 crore more in 2AC, 3AC and Chair Car segment since the launch of surge pricing,” said a senior railway ministry official.