Rail passengers pick other options as space crunch hobbles ease of travel

The Railways has an ambitious plan to use land parcels to create holding areas for passengers but many of those spaces have been encroached upon, putting pressure on platforms and leading to stampedes

(This is the third and concluding part of our series on regional connectivity in northern India)

 

Every afteroon, a long line of cars snarls the entry point to Platform 16 of the New Delhi railway station from where blue riband trains like the Rajdhani Express and Duronto operate. The platform, unlike the others at the station, offers a quick entry for cars from the national capital region for passengers to disembark just next to these trains. 

As this correspondent discovered in January this year for a railway trip he took, the approach from Bhavbhuti Marg next to the Ajmeri gate entrance of the station is snarled by the lack of space next to the platform, from where cars can pull in and pull out without creating a tailgate. On that day, the online car parking system of the vendor had stalled, making irate passengers jump from their cars midway, creating a furious mishmash of vehicles, people, porters, and suitcases strewn hither-thither. 

It is an image blighting all major stations in Northern India, and which has hampered connectivity prospects using the Railways in the world’s densest population corridor. Just like the partial connectivity achieved on its most ambitious investment project, the Dedicated Freight Corridors, the Railways struggles to provide connectivity for its passengers too. This is notwithstanding successes like linking the Kashmir valley with the rest of India with the massive Chenab bridge as the backdrop. 

Alternatives like air-conditioned buses, RRTS, and now a dense ring of airports have thus caught the imagination of the public as preferred connectivity nodes. Those are flourishing while the Railways struggle with a series of bad news, such as the stampede in the New Delhi railway station earlier this year among passengers rushing for the Maha Kumbh, and the occasional derailment like the one in Odisha last week. 

At any moment, ferrying freight or people on the railway lines parallel to the Ganga is a fraught exercise. The Railways has a total stock of 79,000 coaches, not much greater than Japan which has about 44,000 of them, despite the population gap. Data from the Indian Railways shows that it plans to manufacture an additional 17,000 such coaches to cater to the increased demand of the passengers travelling by non-AC coaches.

 

Standing space only

 

The challenge, as Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has pointed out, is to generate space outside the platforms for them to wait. The stampede of passengers going for train journey to the Maha Kumbh in February this year showed just how much of a human cost this lack of space extracts. No doubt the huge volume of people using the train routes makes creating more space difficult. For example, Railways data shows 4.24 crore passengers travelled on trains to Prayagraj for the Maha Kumbh this year. 

Wiser after the incident, the Railways told Parliament that it plans to use land parcels as holding areas to handle the “heavy rush of passengers at stations during festival/Mela periods with a limited Access Control System”. 

There is one catch, though: finding enough land to create holding areas outside stations, so that passengers are allowed to come onto the platforms only when the train arrives. Space in front of popular railway stations, even if notionally held by the Board, is often taken over by shops. The Railways use the soft term “infringements” to describe such takeovers. A Board official speaking on the condition of anonymity said “Progress also gets affected due to brownfield-related challenges such as shifting of utilities like water and sewage lines, optical fibre cables, gas pipe lines, cables and infringements.” 

In a Parliamentary reply, the ministry has noted that “Development and upgradation of railway stations is complex in nature involving safety of passengers and trains and requires various statutory clearances such as fire clearance, heritage, tree cutting, airport clearances, etc. These factors affect the completion time." 

Data shows that of the 4.90 lakh hectares of land the Indian Railways hold, only about 8,812 hectares has been leased out as of March 2024. These are the land parcels meant to offer holding areas, as well as cargo-related facilities and for commercial development. Most of these are the remit of Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA), the special purpose vehicle that was set up in 2007. The RLDA has taken over 94 stations for redevelopment, including New Delhi. Of these, only two have been commissioned, one of which is Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The minister’s plan for a dedicated holding area could send the plans for the rest back to the drawing board. 

The plans, as railway documents note, came up in 2024. “During the festival season of 2024, holding areas were created outside stations. These waiting areas were able to hold large crowds at Surat, Patna, and New Delhi. Passengers were allowed only when the train came to the platform. Similar arrangements were made during Mahakumbh at nine stations of Prayagraj area. Based on the experience of these stations, it has been decided to create permanent waiting areas outside stations at 60 stations across the country, which periodically face heavy crowds”.

 

Connectivity Costs

 

Such lofty plans, though, come with a high cost, since they entail creating complete access control systems, where only passengers with confirmed tickets will be allowed to go to the platforms. Passengers without a ticket or with a waitlisted ticket will have to wait outside. This will need sealing off of all unauthorised entry points. In every station, as the movement of the population shows, this will be a huge task. 

As an engineering officer of the Railways noted, the Board will need to begin a fresh cost evaluation exercise for each of these projects. The Railways already makes heavy losses in its passenger business division. The ministry’s own data shows the loss per passenger is as high as 47.5 per cent of the total fare. For FY24, the aggregate loss was Rs 60,466 crore. 

Some of those losses could be made good by the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC), the biggest investment plan by the Railways which, including the cost of land, is pegged at Rs 81,459 crore as per the cabinet approval data of 2015. These two lines, both originating from Ludhiana in Punjab are, however, yet to be completed. Out of a total 2843 km, 96.4 per cent has been commissioned and operational. “DFC has contributed to creating additional paths on the conventional network by diverting freight traffic to them. Traffic on DFC in FY25, till Feb 2025 has reached to 352 average trains per day (sic),” the Railways noted. Those are good numbers but far below their full potential. 

JICA, which had partially funded the project, had estimated that by 2018 profit after tax would be Rs 363 crore in 2018 growing to Rs 572 crore over 25 years. “This reflects the efficiency that will be brought in by DFCCIL in Operations and Maintenance through increase in mechanization, reduced manpower norms, induction of new technology, systems etc”. However, the project is yet to generate any profit.