Railways seeks to make private players' journey smoother

NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways won't run any new scheduled train on the same route from originating stations within 60 minutes of the scheduled departure of a train to be operated by private players. This restriction won’t apply only if the capacity utilisation of the train by a private player is more than 80% in the last three months.
While this provision will bring comfort to private operators of 151 trains on 109 pairs of routes, the bid document floated by the railway board has provision for penalty for both the private players and the national transporter, if either party fails to meet the pre-specified parameters.
“Indian Railways shall provide a non-discriminatory access to the trains operated by the concessionaire,” the bid document said. The tickets would be sold through the IRCTC.
The bid document for private trains has also specified the journey hours for each of these trains. For example, the train from Delhi to New Rishikesh would have to reach in 5 hours 10 minutes and a train from Delhi to Patna and Delhi to Mumbai would need to cover the stretch in 11 hours and 15 hours and 35 minutes respectively.
Most of the trains would be daily. There would be some trains that would run once, twice and thrice a week as well.
Though sources said that last year several top firms such as Indigo, Makemytrip, Tata Infrastructure and Adani Group had participated in a meeting by the railway board to the interest of private players in the project, officials said once the bids are opened later this month it would know which all entities are showing interest now.