Bibek Debroy: Trains and numbers

Since there is a capacity crunch, shouldn't the number of trains be rationalised?

How many trains does Indian Railways (IR) run every day?  You will probably get a figure of around 19,000. That’s based on a break-up of around 12,000 passenger trains and 7,000 goods trains. All three numbers, passenger, goods and total are dated, though they continue to figure on the Railway Board’s website. For instance, there is also a figure (from the 2014-15 IR Year Book) of 9,202 daily goods trains and 13,098 daily passenger trains, a total of 22,300 trains. IR isn’t so large that there should be an anomaly of 3,300 trains per day. The numbers on the Railway Board website need updating. Let’s focus on the daily passenger train figure of, say, 13,000. How many are suburban trains? Such answers should be readily available from IR sources, in the public domain, but aren’t. Typically, “suburban” is defined as trains consisting of EMUs (electrical multiple units) or self-propelled carriages. Most of these are in Mumbai (almost 3,000), followed by Kolkata (around 1,500) and Chennai (almost 1,000). Delhi and Hyderabad have a sprinkling. If you add up the EMUs, you will get an aggregate of 5,420. In that classification of suburban and non-suburban, I am not sure where IR includes MEMUs/DMUs. MEMUs are mainline EMUs, while DMUs are diesel multiple units. MEMUs/DMUs shouldn’t really be included in suburban. But there aren’t too many of these yet, a shade less than 1,400. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that much, quantitatively speaking.
 
5,420+1,400 = 6,820. If you take that away from 13,000, you are left with 6,180 “regular” passenger trains. If you include the 1,400, the figure will be 7,580. But do remember that trains typically come in pairs, “Up” and “Down”. Without that, the aggregate number will be halved. IR invariably classifies these as mail/express versus ordinary passenger trains. Trains also have something like an “order of precedence”. In this, mail trains come before express trains and express trains come before ordinary passenger trains. Therefore, what’s the definition of a mail train, or an express train? Try and think of a mail train — Thiruvananthapuram Mail, Punjab Mail, Lucknow Mail, Golden Temple Mail, Howrah-Chennai Mail, Howrah-Mumbai Mail, Kalka Mail, Darjeeling Mail, Saurashtra Mail, or Chennai Mumbai CST Superfast Mail.  That mail appellation is a legacy, because those trains used to carry mail in the past. There used to be Railway Mail Service (RMS) coaches on trains, a bit like small post offices, and mail sorting was done there. Yes, a few of these mail trains still have RMS coaches (Golden Temple Mail, Howrah-Chennai Mail, Howrah-Mumbai Mail, Kalka Mail, Saurashtra Mail, Chennai-Mumbai CST Superfast Mail). But that’s because old habits die hard. Not all mail trains have RMS coaches. Mail can be carried as parcel post. Non-mail trains also carry mail. Therefore, RMS coaches and the mail nomenclature should probably just be junked. That order of precedence existed because mail by train was once important. It no longer is and I doubt that order of precedence is strictly followed.
 

BRING TO ACCOUNT Indian Railways isn’t so large that there should be an anomaly of 3,300 trains per day. The numbers of various types of trains on the Railway Board website needs to be updated

How useful is the express nomenclature? There is the Nilagiri (Blue Mountain) Express from Chennai to Mettupalayam, which incidentally, also has an RMS coach. This has an average speed of 59 km/hour. There are express trains like Gatimaan and Bhopal Shatabdi that have average speeds of more than 100 km/hour. Hence, there is some diversity within the express category, too. Since superfast is defined (on broad gauge) as an average speed of more than 55 km/hour, there is diversity within this nomenclature also. Out of that figure of 6,820, how many are express trains? Because such classifications are not placed in the public domain by IR (though they should be), one has to sit down with timetables and count. There are around 2,600 express trains. Most people know that trains now have a five-digit number. A second digit of 2, usually, though not invariably, connotes a superfast train. If this count is correct, there are around 1,400 superfast express trains. Though the discourse and the debate may be captured by the 2,600 or 1,400 express trains, this still leaves more than 4,000 ordinary passenger trains.
 
Think of the Mettupalayam-Ooty Passenger train. This has an average speed of 10 km/hour. In fairness, this passes through hilly terrain and is meter gauge. However, in this talk about bullet trains, within broad gauge, what of the Konch-Ait Shuttle or Passenger (no. 51870)? This travels a distance of 13 km at an average speed of 23 km/hour and the entire rake consists of a single general unreserved coach. Why run this train? Here is a tidbit. The second digit in a five-digit number gives us the zone.  Out of those 4,000-odd ordinary passenger trains, 860 (disproportionately high) have a second digit of “4”, standing for NR (Northern Railway), NCR (North Central Railway) and NWR (North Western Railway). The Allahabad-Kanpur-Varanasi-Mughal Sarai stretch is one of the busiest of IR stretches. Do a search. You will find 111 trains every day between Allahabad and Mughal Sarai. These are just passenger trains, including Express trains. Freight trains aren’t timetabled. I am told around 250 freight trains pass that stretch.  Rajdhani, Garib Rath, Mail/Express, Superfast, Suvidha and Sampark Kranti account for the bulk of the 111. But given the capacity crunch, does one need to run three ordinary passenger trains, two MEMUs and two DEMUs along that stretch? More importantly, since we have a capacity crunch, shouldn’t we rationalise the number of trains?

The writer is a member of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog. The views are personal