Over a million Indians don't get a train seat daily: Study

Indicating a whopping demand-supply mismatch, a new study released here on Wednesday has revealed that over a million Indians fail to get a seat every day on the Indian Railways due to unavailability of tickets.

The study by RailYatri.in portal said that though the demand-supply gap on long-distance trains is well known since long, but the scale of this mismatch has never been quantified.

In the past nine months, the portal tracked train ticket bookings across India to analyse this mismatch, which threw up a figure of between 10-12 lakh potential travellers per day who failed to get a confirmed ticket for their proposed journey.

These were people whose wait-listed tickets did not get confirmed and percentage-wise it translates to nearly 13 per cent of long-distance train travellers daily, increasing to about 19 percent during peak travel seasons like holidays or festivals.

The data used mathematical models to analyse the travel plans of over three million travellers from over 3,100 railway stations looking for seats in nearly 2,800 long-distance trains, said Manish Rathi, CEO of RailYatri.in.

"The ability for people to travel in an unconstrained manner is an essential spoke in the wheel of any nation's economy. Despite increase in several transport options, trains continue to be the most preferred mode for long-distance travel in India," Rathi said.

While one solution would be to add more services, it would actually require hundreds of trains running daily, making it difficult on the already overloaded rail network, he pointed out.

Some of the worst-hit railway stations which had maximum number of people failing to get confirmed seats include: Anand Vihar Terminus, Delhi (43 per cent), Jammu Tawi (38), Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Mumbai (33).

They are followed by: Howrah Junction, Kolkata (28), Bangalore City Junction and Haridwar Junction (both 21), Pune Junction and Guwahati (20), Chennai Central and Gorakhpur Junction (19), Amritsar Junction, Lucknow and Secunderabad Junction (18), Ahmedabad Junction and Jaipur (17), Patna Junction (12).

Besides there are: Bhopal, Allahabad and Kanpur (eight per cent each) and Nagpur and Bhubaneshwar (seven per cent).

--IANS

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