Passenger footfalls have more than doubled from around a month ago according to Chairman & CEO, Railway Board, Suneet Sharma.
Responding to a query on the position of passenger demand, Sharma said, “There used to be 500,000 daily reserved passengers around a month ago. This has now increased to 1.3 million per day. The surge in demand over two months is expected to sustain for the next two months. Depending on the position of waiting list, we have been trying to meet this demand by plying clone trains. There are 26 clone trains operating right now. We also getting indications that we should anticipate more passenger demand.”
“We are increasing the number of trains as the lockdowns are being eased,” he added.
The Railways is currently operating 889 Special Mail Express trains on an average per day. There are 479 Passenger trains and 26 special trains being operated as clones of highly-patronised trains.
“These clone trains are for destinations having high demand like Gorakhpur, Patna, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Varanasi, Guwahati, Varanasi, Barauni, Prayagraj, Bokaro, Ranchi, Lucknow and Kolkata,” a Rail Ministry presentation said.
There are 2,891 Suburban services per day also being operated. The Railways is allowing only passengers with reserved tickets to travel in a bid to contain overcrowding and stop the spread of Covid-19.
Freight loading continued to be higher than pre-pandemic months during the first week of June 2021. Total freight loading till June 7, 2021 stood at 26.48 million tonnes (MT), up from 23.14 MT in the first week of June 2019.
The Rail Ministry said that food grain loading has also started picking up and stood at 1.26 MT in June 2021 compared to 1.12 MT in the first week of June 2020.
Dear Reader,
Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
We, however, have a request.
As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.
Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.
Digital Editor