Vande Bharat trains save passengers one hour on journeys, cost 52% more

Vande Bharat trains save more than an hour for its passengers, 65 minutes to be accurate, compared to the next best option on the routes they operate, Mint has reported. However, they also tend to be costlier by an average of 52 per cent than the most economical alternative, the report said.

Vande Bharat tickets for certain routes, such as the one between Gandhinagar and Mumbai, are priced as high as 112 per cent more but save only 22 per cent travel time. On the other hand, some routes are operating swift trains, giving domestic airlines tough competition.

Talking about the achievements of the Vande Bharat service, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Lok Sabha that the Vande Bharat trains had 96.6 per cent utilisation in 2022-23 and 99.6 per cent during April-June 2023, the Mint report added.

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The minister said that the route between Kasaragod and Thiruvananthapuram is the best-performing one with an average occupancy of 183 per cent. Occupancy is considered to be above 100 per cent when some passengers travel only a part of the full journey. This results in a situation where multiple passengers occupy one seat in a single run. Some routes also experienced utilisation at as low as 50 per cent.

While Vande Bharat can be seen as the country's first step towards creating a high-speed railway infrastructure, the journey for these trains has not been without speed bumps. Incidents of stone-pelting and trains hitting stray cattle have come to the fore. Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told the lower house of the parliament that arrests have been made in cases of stone-pelting. Moreover, sensitisation drives have been organised in residential areas near railway tracks to quell such incidents, the minister said.

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Initially known as Train 18, Vande Bharat Express trains started operations in February 2019. Plying on various routes around the country, there are 25 pairs of Vande Bharat services. Eighteen of these trains were launched this year in 2023.

Vande Bharat trains have been designed to run at speeds of up to 180 kmph. However, a dearth of suitable tracks prevents these trains from reaching their optimum speeds. As things stand, Vande Bharat trains operate at a maximum of 130 kmph, and this is only true for select routes. Average speeds are further slower despite the low number of stops and the faster acceleration and deceleration capacity of these trains.

At 95 kmph, the New Delhi-Varansi route remains the fastest on the Vande Bharat network despite being the longest in terms of distance.

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