Railways to meet festival demand with more counters, special trains

Every year, it's a maddening rush at railway stations across the country around festival season. To cope with it, for the first time this year, the Delhi division of Northern Railway will have 23 additional counters. All the new counters have already opened. Of them, 12 are at the Anand Vihar terminal in East Delhi. Five new counters have been added at the New Delhi station, and six at the old Delhi railway station.

The Delhi division runs 330 mail and express trains that include 12 pairs each of Rajdhani Express and Shatabdi Express. It also runs Duronto, Jan Shatabdi Express, and Garib Rath Express, among other trains.

This festive season, 37 more pairs of trains originating from Delhi have been introduced and six pairs of passing trains. Round trips will be made during Diwali and the Chhath Puja from four railway stations - New Delhi, Old Delhi, Delhi Sarai Rohilla and Anand Vihar. Two of these trains are similar to the Jansadharan trains that have only general coaches. Another 72 coaches have been added to the 39 existing train pairs. To increase carrying capacity, each unreserved coach will carry 100 passengers, while each reserved coach will accommodate 75 passengers.

Anurag Sachan, Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Northern Railway, said his team was not under pressure in the rush season since corrective measures are all in place now. "The peak festival rush will start from October 31 and will continue until November 9. Diwali is manageable but Chhath Puja is not," he said. This is because Chhath Puja is a prominent festival in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and thousands of migrants travel back to their homes to celebrate it. "We have planned platform berthing (which train will leave from which platform) in advance to avoid stampedes," he added.

Sachan went on to say that they were restricting platform tickets only to attendants of handicapped people and those passengers who were under medication. From October 31 to November 6, the railway stations in Delhi will not be selling platform tickets. This was a step taken to manage the rush. "Almost 500,000 passengers throng the New Delhi railway station every day. During festival season, it increases by 25 per cent," he said. This corrective measure has been taken after a 2011 stampede during Chhath Puja.

With 2,500 passengers per trip, it will add up to 13,45,000 passengers in 538 trips this festive season. "As far as supply is concerned, we have augmented our capacity by 10 per cent. But there's still more demand," Sachan added.

"We also have LHB coaches (German-made) coaches - the same coaches that the Rajdhani Express trains have - for Bhubaneswar special and Mumbai special besides trains with only general coaches," said a senior official from the operations department. LHB coaches are the passenger compartments of Indian Railways that have been developed by Linke-Hofmann-Busch of Germany.

The number of trains to Lucknow have increased this time around since many migrant workers use this route.

Also, many passengers are considering train routes since airfares are skyrocketing.

Delhi Division has increased catering and vending stalls inside railway platforms. It has deployed 1,000 security personnel for station management.

From its passenger as well as freight trains, the Delhi Division has generated Rs 7,000 crore in revenue last fiscal year. It is positioned in tenth place in terms of revenue among 16 zonal railways.