Almost a month after the revision of card ticket fares of air-conditioned locals, railways registered drastic growth in the sale of card tickets in May 2022. On the Central Railway, sales of AC local trains increased by 305 per cent in May as compared to April 2022. Similarly, Western Railway registered a growth of 235 per cent in the sales of card tickets of AC local in May as compared to April 2022.
As per data provided by CR, the daily average sale of card tickets of AC local went up to 5,964 in May as compared to 1,519 in April 2022.
Similarly in WR, the daily average sale of card tickets of AC local went up to 6,254 in May as compared to 1,867 in April 2022.
In May a total of 963,627 passengers travelled by air-conditioned local operated by CR (with a daily average of 31,085 passengers) which is 65 per cent more than those travelled in April 2022.
Similarly, 11,17,809 passengers used AC local train services of WR in May 2022 with a daily average of 36,058 passengers. This is 60 per cent more than those travelled in April 2022.
Confirming the development, a senior railway official said, "After revision in card ticket fare of AC local number of passengers continuously increasing. Many fold increase in the sale of card tickets of AC local shows that apart from the first-class regular passengers, car or private vehicle users have also started using AC local services," further added the official. Currently, 32 air-conditioned local services are operated daily by WR and 56 by CR.
"After the reduction of the fare from May 5, the number of passengers travelling in AC local started increasing rapidly and there was a demand to increase the services between mainline CSMT-Kalyan-Titwala-Badlapur. Keeping these demands in mind, the Central Railway has increased the services by shifting the AC local trains running on the Harbor line to the mainline," said Subhas Gupta, a passenger activist explaining the reason behind the growth in the sale of card ticket AC local in central railway.
After shifting around a dozen of AC local services of the harbour line to the mainline on CR, the number of AC passengers increased by 7.5 per cent. Between May 1st to May 13th, the daily number of AC passengers of CR was 29,039, which went up to 31,208 between May 14th to May 31st.
255 first-class passenger upgraded their pass in May:
In May, 255 first-class passengers upgraded their monthly passes to AC class including 192 passengers of WR and 63 of CR. In April, only 87 first-class passengers had upgraded their monthly passes of non AC local trains to AC local trains including 37 on WR and 49 on CR.
Passengers can upgrade their monthly passes:
If any passenger wants to upgrade his/her monthly local pass to AC local class, they can do it through the booking window by paying the difference. "For the up-gradation of first-class non AC local monthly pass to air-conditioned local, the difference of the fare between first-class monthly pass and AC monthly needed to be paid for the entire month irrespective of the days left in the first-class monthly pass and the validity of same shall be as per the validity of first-class monthly pass only," said a railway official.
