Come the last week of July, the Indian Railways is considering introducing four new Vande Bharat train routes - Delhi to Chandigarh (243 km), Chennai to Tirunelveli (622 km), Gwalior to Bhopal (432 km) and Lucknow to Prayagraj (200 km).
Officials told The Hindu, “While the train sets will mostly be eight coaches, one route may have a 16-coach train if the demand along that route is high.”
The new Vande Bharat launches come at a time when Railways is juggling with a two-fold challenge that of attempting to enhance occupancy by lowering passenger fare.
According to official occupancy data of Vande Bharat trains running between April 1 to June 29, there are seven out of 46 routes which reflect lower occupancy, lesser than 60%.
For instance, the Andaura to New Delhi Vande Bharat connecting New Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, is a 16-coach train with a capacity to carry over a thousand passengers but has an average occupancy of only 61%.
Also, for the Goa-Mumbai route, the occupancy is 55%. “In some instances, the occupancy varies seasonally. The occupancy is set to remain low as people do not prefer to travel to Goa during monsoons, especially now the holiday season is also over,” the official said.
In other instances, between Indore to Bhopal and on the return journey, the occupancy was as low as 21% and 29% respectively. “It is data from the initial days of the launch, we are expecting the demand to pick up, but if it doesn’t we are considering lowering ticket fare as one cannot afford to run near empty trains,” officials said.
The railways have decided to taper down ticket fares of trains by up to 25% in a graded manner to increase demand. “This is not only for Vande Bharat trains but for all trains which have Chair Cars and Executive Chair Cars. We are not going for a flat rate cut. Instead, the power to decrease fares has been decentralised, at a Zonal level. Officials will review occupancy data for the previous month and then consider revising tariffs in a graded manner, first by 10% or 20%, then check if the occupancy improves and so on,” the official said.
Also while a few routes have low occupancy, at least 20 of 46 routes have occupancy of over 100%, data suggests. Some of the popular routes are Trivandrum-Kasaragod (172-180%), Mumbai-Gandhinagar (129-134%), Howrah-New Jalpaiguri (103-108%) and so on. Occupancy of over 100% may indicate waitlisted passengers too.
