Airlines hike airfare from Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata to Patna ahead of the festive season

It is the festive season and airlines have hiked the airfares from Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata to Patna. The rise is, in some cases is in excess of more than three-fold over the off-peak season rates. The price of air tickets for flights from Delhi to Patna and from Mumbai to Patna were more than the rate from Delhi to Sharjah or from Delhi to Singapore or Delhi to Bangkok. These are for destinations in other countries. Obviously, airline companies were taking advantage of the flexible fare during the peak season. In the opinion of experts, the spike might continue. This is not only for Delhi but also for other cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and Surat. It is obvious that people can afford to pay these exorbitant rates and no one is gumbling. Airfare from Delhi, Mumbai to Patna rises upto three fold amid Diwali, Chhath.

One of the biggest reasons for the spikes in airfare could possibly be the non-availability of train tickets. The waiting lists for trains are very high and even Tatkal tickets are not available. Hence, the railways plan to start additional mail and express trains bound for destinations in Bihar. These could include Patna, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Jay Nagar, Kishanganj, Katihar, and Barauni (Begusarai). Moreover, Northern Railway has decided to run 32 additional mail and express trains bound to provide some relief to the passengers. According to the officials, there will be 211 trains until Chatth Puja. These will originate from Jammu, Amritsar, Ferozepur, Delhi, Bhiwani, and Pathankot. The authorities want the people to come home to enjoy the festive season with their near and dear ones.

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Patna-Delhi Rajdhani Express to get a new look

The Indian Railways are gearing up to upgrade the Patna-Delhi Rajdhani Express under the new program called Project Swarn and trains under this category will start running from the last week of September. Under the program the premier train will get a complete makeover and will get some new facilities like trolley service for catering and on-board entertainment in the form of movies and music.
This has been reported in telegraphindia.com dated 29 June 2017.

The makeover is believed to be a 3-month program and will bring change to 10 areas namely - coach interiors, toilets, on-board cleanliness, punctuality, catering, linen, staff behaviour, security, on-board entertainment and real time feedback. The railway board has granted approval for up to Rs 1 crore for renovation of the Rajdhani Express. A total of 30 trains will get the upgrades - that is 15 eachj of the Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains.
The decision is taken in view of the forthcoming festive season during which passengers can be provided with the best possible services.


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Dehradun railway station reopens after 40 days

Railway authorities have announced that the train services through Dehradun would be resumed after it was suspended for 40 days carrying out construction and maintenance work on one of the platforms. The traffic block started on April 17 and is now ready to be thrown open. The closure affected at least 16 trains that crossed Dehradun or originated here and were rerouted to Haridwar creating in this period.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 27 May 2017.

Indian Railways have informed that the work was necessary to improve facilities and cleanliness at the station and the objective was to provide a cleaner railway station to the travelers. The work on the tracks are over and only the finishing touches on the platform remain.
The shopkeepers at the station premises were happy because their business had suffered and earnings had dropped for the period of closure.


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Western Railway to have food plazas at seven stations for a start

As envisaged by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, and in order to generate revenues from non-tariff sources, Western Railway plans to have food plazas at seven stations for a start - the stations selected for the first phase are Churchgate, Dadar, Andheri, Bhayender, Vasai Road, Vapi and Valsad.
These plazas will be operational 24 hours a day, and will offer wide variety of Indian, Continental, Chinese, and fast food.
This has been reported in thehindu.com dated 21 February 2017.

Indian Railways (IR) enjoy the highest captive eyeballs in a railway system internationally but it earns less than 5% of its revenue through non-tariff sources while many railway systems in the world are able to generate 10 to 20% of their revenues from non-tariff sources. Therefore, within next five years, the Railways wants to monetise its assets and undertake other revenue-yielding activities.
Hence, the Western Railway' scheme of establishing food plazas at railway stations within the next six months. The first batch of sensations have been identified and the viability of four more at Palghar, Borivali, Bandra Terminus and Boisar is being studied.


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Steel mugs in lavatories of trains stolen in spite of being chained to the walls

Swatchh Bharat is he dream of our Prime minister Narendra Modi and, in order to make it a reality, plenty of funds have been earmarked. The Jabalpur Division of West Central Railway introduced steel mugs in the lavatories - the mugs were kept chained to the walls. But, over the pat three months, 1100 of the 1800 have gone missing.
With such an attitude among the travelers, the Prime Minister's Clean India campaign would be extremely difficult to implement because, such an experiment has failed.
This has been reported in telegraphindia.com dated 4 January 2017.

Until recently, steel mugs were available in the toilets of only some of the AC coaches. But, the railways have begun to provide them in all categories of compartments. Jabalpur Division began implementation three months ago and, when a recount was done after 90 days, there were only 700 of the 1,800 mugs left.
The cost of the stolen mugs is estimated to be Rs 90,000 and, an equal sum had been spent on the steel chains - these had been yanked off the wall clamps.
A senior railway official added that one day, 80 new mugs were installed in the Shridham Express. This train travels between Jabalpur and New Delhi and, when it returned to Jabalpur 36 hours later, there were only 20 mugs. It seems all the mugs in the AC and sleeper coaches were missing - presumed to have been stolen.


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Spanish Talgo trying to impress the lovers of Bullet trains with its peformance

Talgo is a company of Spain and it is right now in India with its high-speed train and running it on existing railway tracks at different locations - it is clocking up maximum speeds of 180kmph. The Indian Railways has conducted the second trial run for high-speed Talgo trains on the existing Palwal-Mathura section of the North-Central Railway.
This has been reported in zeenews.india.com dated 14 July 2016.

In the course of its trial run, it broke the record of the country's first semi-high speed train Gatimaan Express between Delhi and Agra which can run at a maximum speed of 160 kmph. However, the Talgo train clocked a maximum speed of 180 km per hour during the trial run. It covered the distance of 84-Km in only 38 minutes. At present, it takes more than 90 minutes to cover the distance.
Incidentally, the speed of 180 kmph attained by Talgo is the maximum reached by any train on Indian tracks. The trials were done with empty coaches and in the next phase trials will be conducted with sand bags filling the passenger sitting spaces.
Talgo is based in Madrid and is a leading manufacturer of semi-high speed (160-250 kmph) and high-speed (350 kmph) passenger trains, which are energy-efficient.


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Indian Railways to introduce Tejas, Hamsafar, Antodaya and Deen Dayalu coaches

Indian Railways are to introduce four different types of coaches very soon - these are the Tejas, Hamsafar, Antodaya and Deen Dayalu. It has been the tradition of Indian Railways that the minister introduce new types of trains and, there was a Garib Rath (Chariot of the Poor) which had been introduced to allow everyone to enjoy the luxuries of air conditioned train travel.
And, the present minister appears to be following in the footsteps of his predecessors.
This has been reported in indianexpress.com dated 10 July 2016.

Tejas will have high-tech entertainment units, wi-fi facility and integrated braille displays to enable passengers to get a feel of world class travel. Tejas coaches will have Executive Class and Chair Cars and will be equipped with 22 new features including entertainment screens for each passenger along with hand phone socket and LED boards for communicating safety instructions. There will also be tea and coffee vending machines, magazines and snack tables.
Hamsafar coaches will be 3-AC and have CCTVs, and fire and smoke detection and suppression system.
The color schemes will also be different for each variant. While the coaches of Tejas, meaning brilliance, will be of golden color, those of Hamsafar will be draped in vinyl sheets painted in the colors of earth and sky to convey the message of being the common man’s carrier.
Antodaya Express will be a fully unreserved train and Deen Dayalu coaches will have improved facilities for general class passengers.


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Pick up your pizza and burger from the railway station soon

Indian Railways are fast tracking food for its passengers and, in its latest innovation, it is trying to tie up with big names to make available burgers and pizzas at railway stations - thereby, the passenger can buy it and board he train. As per indications,train passengers will soon be able to order burgers and pizzas of their choice on the Indian Railways website and have them delivered right to their coaches. And, for last-minute purchases, vendor boys will be waiting on platforms with ready-to-serve burgers, pizzas and Indian thalis.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 28 June 2016.

The names doing the rounds are leading quick service restaurants (QSR) like Domino's Pizza, Burger King, Subway, KFC and Pizza Hut. They are expected to venture into new territory by opening up stores at railway stations to tap train passengers in the country. The potential is huge because the Indian Railways operates about 12,000 trains carrying 23 million passengers every day.
Such burger and pizza outlets are set to come up in food courts planned at stations such as Howrah, Mumbai, Madurai, Agra, Pune and Visakhapatnam. Railway passengers on an average spend around Rs 100-125 on a meal. It is less when compared to airports but, the volume of business in railways is many times more than airports.


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Agra-New Delhi corridor to get fully air-conditioned double decker superfast express trains

Indian Railways plans to introduce doubledecker air-conditioned trains on the Agra-Delhi corridor. This decision is based on the successful run on ten traffic-heavy rail routes that connect metropolitan cities. The fully air-conditioned double decker superfast express will now be introduced on the Agra-New Delhi corridor.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 18 May 2016.

The decision is based on the increasing demand from Agra residents for quick connectivity with the national capital during morning hours. Accordingly, preparations are being made to survey its operational feasibility. Engineers will inspect the 200-Km stretch of the track and platforms of intervening stations because such double decker coaches require different specifications and sizes of the platform to operate.
The AC double-decker train will have 12 coaches with 110 seats in each and will run at approximately a maximum speed of 110 kmph - the fare is likely to be less than that of Gatimaan Express.


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Soon home cooked food by self help groups would be available for train travelers

Food available on trains has always been a sore point of the Indian Railways and the new Railway Minister is leaving no stone unturned to offer the best available food service to train travelers. After e-catering, he has now decided to rope in self-help groups to serve home coked food to train travelers. A pilot project has been launched in the Konkan region of Maharashtra for supply of local cuisine by SHGs to train travelers.
This has been reported in ibnlive.com dated 14 April 2016.

As per the arrangement, two stations in the Konkan region - Kudal and Sawantwadi - have been identified for the pilot project.
It seems the Indian Railways have entered into a partnership with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to facilitate SHGs of farmers to supply local meals to train passengers. For this, two stations in the Konkan region - Kudal and Sawantwadi - have been identified for the pilot project.
In order to avail of this facility, passengers will have to order the meal online through IRCTC website during their journey. A similar initiative has been launched in Kerala also and plans are there are plans to gradually extend it to other stations and cover the whole country.
The pilot project is a part of the railway budget 2016-17 that had been announced by Minister Suresh Prabhu to explore the possibility of giving the choice of local cuisine to passengers. Indian Railways has already launched the e-catering facility that offers options to the passengers to book their meals online instead of depending on food supplied by contractors or pantry cars.


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Rajdhani Express to drop a pantry car each to accommodate additional AC-III coach

The Indian Railways is gradually moving towards eliminating pantry cars and embracing e-catering. As a first step, it has decided to withdraw one pantry car each from seven Rajdhani expresses. These will include the ones from Howrah and Sealdah. The pantry car would be dropped to accommodate an extra AC-III tier coach. This will come into effect immediately.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 25 March 2016.

The on-board catering system is always coming in for criticism due to its poor quality of not just food but also service irrespective of which party holds the portfolio of the railways and the Railway Board claims this is the first step towards granting more freedom to Rajdhani passengers in choosing the food they wish to have during the journey. As a result of this decision, breakfast can no longer be prepared on the train and will have to be picked up from a station late in the night and served in the morning. Related service will also be a problem because the catering staff and cleaners used to be accommodated in the pantry cars at night.
From all appearances, it is seen as the first step towards removing pantry cars totally from Rajdhani trains and promote e-catering that has come up at all major stations.


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Cleanliness drive of Indian Railways - Surat, Rajkot and Bilaspur cleanest

Indian Railways is determined to remain in the good books of those who matter and railway minister Suresh Prabhu is leaving no stone unturned to remain in the news to prove his worth. The latest in this venture is the naming of the cleanliest railway stations - needless to say that two of the top three are Surat and Rajkot. Both are in the state of Gujarat and no one should read too much into this.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 18 March 2016.

The latest results are - Surat, Rajkot and Bilaspur are among the cleanest while Solapur, Mumbai Central and Chandigarh follow - this is as per a preliminary survey commissioned by the Railways for 75 A1-category stations. Next comes Bhubaneswar and Vadodara.
At the other extreme are Pune, the dirtiest station, followed by Mughalsarai, Guwahati, Nizamuddin (Delhi), Sealdah and Kanpur Central alongwith Bhopal, Muzaffarpur, Thrisur, Raipur, Varanasi and Delhi.
Among the top 10 cleanest stations in 'A' category (332 stations) are Beas (Punjab), Jamnagar, Gandhidham and Vasco-Da-Gama (Goa) while least cleanest stations in Category 'A' stations are Shahganj, Ballia and Janghai (Uttar Pradesh), Madhubani and Bakhtiyarpur (Bihar) and Raichur (Karnataka).
All the 75 A-1 and 332 A category stations across 16 zonal railways were surveyed based on passenger perception on cleanliness at the stations. As the railway minister has said - the basic idea is to make the entire rail network clean and a beginning has been made. The objective is to bring all stations on par with a particular standard. The move is aimed at improving cleanliness at 8,000 stations across the country and take forward the 'Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat' mission.


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Very soon, the Indian Railways might be run by private agencies

#bibekdebroy #indianrailways #mamtabanerjee #kolkatametro The high powered Bibek Debroy panel has suggested several ways to ensure that the Indian Railways become a profit making concern and one of these ways is to hand over its working to private concerns. It should delink from producing coaches, wagons and locomotives and switch over to commercial accounting of railway functions. Moreover, it should hand over the running of both passenger trains and freight trains to private players.
Moreover, this Debroy panel has also suggested that the national transporter delink itself from welfare services like running of schools and hospitals apart from managing the Railway Protection Force (RPF).
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 1 April 2015.

Another of its suggestions is to have an Indian Railway Manufacturing Company to replace all existing production units and, simultaneously, have another holding company for railway stations.
The panel has also indicated that there should be one ministry of transport in the future and that the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation should be detached from the railways – it had been integrated during the tenure of Mamata Banerjee as rail minister.
The suggestions are very practical ones because, till now, the Indian Railways has been used as a political tool and each and every railway minister has played to the galleries and has tried to get things done for his or her constituencies. Many of the projects that have been sanctioned have remained on paper and innumerable foundation stones have been laid but not the corresponding railway lines.

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Indian Railways – Budget 2015 is a budget of hollow promises

#RailBudget2015 #PrabhukiRail #biotoilet #IndianRailways The Railway Budget presented by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in the Parliament has made plenty of claims that may not be feasible given the mindset of Indians. In this connection reference can be made to ndtv.com dated 26 February 2015.
The fact that there is no change in passenger fares and no hikes is passe. But, why the reservation booking period of 4 months – can anybody predict what would happen in 4 months’ time. And – when he is unable to perform the journey, he would have to cancel it and pay cancellation charges. That is unfair. The reservation booking period should be much less – 10 days, as it used to be in the 1960s and 70s.
When it comes to cleanliness, we all know that it is of prime importance but, Indians are a typical set of people who have a different concept of cleanliness that may not match with the ideas of the Minister. It is good to know that integrated cleaning will be taken up through private agencies – what is left unsaid is that the contracts would probably go to people who have contacts that matter.
The Minister has indicated that 600 new bio-toilets would be brought in – probably these would be fitted in the Rajdhani Express and Shatbdi Express trains. But, the idea of replacing 17,000 old toilets with bio-toilets is vague. The toilets are an integral part of each coach. Each coach has four toilets and, to replace them, the coaches would have to go to the sheds for major repair work.
With 4 toilets in each coach and with each long distance train usually having around 30 coaches – that would mean 120 toilets in every train. Therefore, 17000 toilets would mean roughly 140 trains. Would the replacement of 17000 toilets become a 10-year project?
Before going in for such dream projects, the railways can come down to ground realities and take some action to check and repair or replace latches of existing toilets – many of them are unserviceable, broken or even missing.
Another area that needs to be clarified is that of audio-based warnings at unmanned railway crossings – the number of unmanned level crossings in the country is over 3000 as admitted and majority of these are in remote locations where electricity has yet to reach – therefore, the Minister should explain just how the audio-based warnings would work. Would these be solar operated systems or manual with fog horn like equipment?

Reducing greenhouse gas emission - Indian Railways introduces CNG run train

#CNGtrain #greenhousegasemission #IndianRailways With the intention to boost non-conventional sources of energy the Indian Railways has taken a major step to introduce CNG trains – the first such train would be in the Rewri-Rohtak sector of north zone.
The train was flagged off by Railway minister Suresh Prabhu and this would run on dual fuel system — diesel and CNG — and the objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Moreover, it would also cut the fuel bill of the transporter by reducing consumption of diesel.
As per reports, the railways have modified the 1,400 HP engine to run on dual fuel namely diesel and CNG by using fumigation technology. The passenger train would consume over 20% of CNG and cover a distance of 81-Km in about two hours.
An official of the Railways has indicated that the use of CNG in trains would gradually be increased to around 50%. Test trials are being conducted for increased usage of CNG. Future plans are for running more such CNG trains to reduce diesel consumption.
Brief details of the Rewri-Rohtak train are – it would consist of two power cars and six car coaches that have been manufactured by the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai and the CNG conversion kit is being supplied by Cummins.