Every year Yuvan goes to Kolkata for the Dasara festival and as always, he tried booking three months in advance only to be put on a long waiting list. As the D-day approached, his tension grew as the list continued to be long and airline tickets continued to be priced very high.
Fortunately, his contacts helped him get two berths confirmed in 2AC and he managed to get in amid the huge crowd at Secunderabad railway station. Throughout the more-than-24-hour journey, he had a harrowing time weaving in and out of coaches to reach the pantry car to get food for his family because passengers occupied every inch.
“Travelling home is only becoming more tiresome and challenging by rail. While passengers’ numbers are growing, there do not seem to be any improvement of facilities from railways. From getting a confirmed ticket to getting on the train and then the journey, it is becoming wearisome,” he says.
Peak demand
Dasara-Deepavali, Christmas-Sankranti and summer holidays are peak demand periods for railways including the South Central Railway (SCR). Despite periodic announcements of special trains and extra coaches to express trains, these are simply insufficient during Dasara and the situation only seems to get worse each year as photographs of overhanging passengers show.
Secunderabad station itself sees more than a lakh footfalls a day and this nearly doubles during festival times with all platforms choc-a-bloc with passengers and visitors as close to 200 trains — express and passenger trains arrive or depart. If 90,000 are outbound passengers daily, it is up to 1.50 lakh during festivals.
“With passenger reservation system there is readymade data available to at least estimate the demand for extra coaches if not trains, but even this is not done while the wait list is given up to 300,” alleges Ravi, passenger.
SCR shortcomings
SCR has its own issues. It has about 800 coaches available on standby of the 4,681 and any extra demand has to be met from them. “Up to 500 of these are sourced to run 24-coach trains based on demand and there is no common pool to source from other zones. We cannot have more than 24 coaches because platforms are built to handle till that number. We are already running trains up to 150% of rail lines capacity. Terminal stations capacity too is limited,” explain senior officials.
Unless Railway Board invests in new lines, rolling stock, engines and stations capacity, little is going to change, they attest. “Eighty per cent of our maintenance and running staff work during festivals and all holidays almost round the clock sans extra pay, but this is not known to many. We are doing our best considering infrastructure constraints,” says SCR official spokesperson M. Umashankar Kumar.