Passenger footfalls have doubled from a month ago: Railway Board chief

Spike in demand over two months likely to sustain for next two months; Railways trying to meet surge with clone trains

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.