Railways to start 200 additional trains during holiday season: Rly Board CEO
At present around 310 special trains are plying since the lockdown was announced while regular trains remain suspended indefinitely.
Railways is planning to introduce 200 additional special trains between October 15 and November 30 to cater to passengers during the holiday season, Railway Board CEO VK Yadav announced on Thursday.
At present around 310 special trains are plying since the lockdown was announced while regular trains remain suspended indefinitely.
“We have conducted meetings with the general managers of zones and instructed them to speak with local administration and review the status of coronavirus. They have been asked to give us a report after which we will decide how many trains can be introduced during the holiday season. Our estimate as of now is that we will run around 200 trains, but it is an estimate, the number could be more,” Yadav said at a press conference.
Regular train services have been suspended since March 22.
“As far as passenger trains are concerned, the situation now is that we will analyse the requirements of trains, the traffic patterns and coronavirus status on a daily basis. Wherever there is a need we will run trains,” he said.
Railways had also introduced 20 pairs of ‘clone special trains’ from September 21, in addition to the 310 special trains operating now.
Yadav also said that the occupancy of clone trains, which were introduced by the national transporter in routes with high demand, is around 60 %.
“We have started the system of clone trains where every morning we analyse the data on trains through a software and our efforts are to ensure that wherever there is long waitlisting, a clone train is run there. We have also decided that wherever the clone train is filled, we will run another clone train on the same route to ensure that there are no passengers waitlisted,” he said
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