Railways Surprises! Gets passengers to give booster shot

Passengers have been weighing heavily on Indian Railways earnings for a long time. Now Railways has managed change that long-term trend to take out more money from their pockets. Actually, not one, there are 2 bright spots for Indian Railways - passengers and coal - as far as padding up its earnings go.  (Agencies)

Latest data suggests a surge in suburban passenger numbers, which has helped the country’s largest transporter post not just a modest increase in overall passenger traffic but also in total earnings from passengers. (Agencies)

Earnings from passengers have shown an almost 3% increase to Rs 19,801.52 crore (19,261.88 crore). As for freight, the incremental loads have led to an over 10% increase in earnings at Rs 45,913.94 crore (41,662.56 crore).  

Passenger numbers: The number of passengers taking a train, instead of a bus or a flight, had declined due to around 78% rise in the number of train trips getting cancelled besides significant delays due to an aggressive maintenance schedule undertaken, thus shutting down train movement for long periods of time.  (Agencies)

Gross passenger earnings had declined by 1.37% to Rs 1,221.31 crore (Rs 1,238.28 crore) or by close to Rs 19 lakh on an average every single day during the first quarter. The number of passengers booked on an originating basis too declined from 2087.1 million to 2088.54 million or almost a 16,000 daily decline. (Reuters)

Data for April-August 20 shows a surge of almost 2.5% in suburban passengers and a decline of over 2% in non-suburban passengers, thereby taking the total number of passengers marginally up by about 12 million at 3,269.25 million (3257.4 million). (PTI)

Total earnings target for this fiscal is Rs 2 lakh crore, up from about Rs 1.78 lakh crore registered in 2017-18. This means Indian Railways will have to generate an incremental revenue of Rs 22,000 crore this fiscal over the last period. (PTI)