NEW DELHI : Indian Railways said Tuesday that it will operate another 80 special trains beginning Sept. 12, in order to increase interstate and intrastate mobility options for people. Reservations for these trains will begin on September 10.
“We have been monitoring the occupation of our trains. Some of the trains were overloaded. Taking this and the covid-19 situation into account, we will notify 40 pairs of trains. Those trains will start operating one week from today. All these trains will be special reserved trains, “Railroad Board Chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav said on Saturday.
The timetable for these trains will be that of regular trains. Strikes will be restricted and discussion with the respective state governments will be taken into consideration. Some of these trains are: Prayagraj-New Delhi Humsafar Express, Dehradun-Kota NandaDevi Express, Delhi-Bhagalpur VikramShila Express.
The Indian railways had suspended all passenger trains due to the imposition of a nationwide shutdown effective March 25. However, it resumed services in a phased fashion, with Shramik Special trains to help stranded migrant workers reach their home states starting May 1. launched 230 special trains throughout the country. Even as the national carrier was set to run more trains from July, several states asked Indian Railways to cancel some of the passenger trains due to the increase in the number of covid-19 cases.
Yadav said 80 trains have been introduced taking into account the covid-19 situation, and also to allow the reverse migration of workers to urban areas to work, with the country entering Unlocking 4.0.
Indian Railways will also introduce cloned or duplicate trains where there is a long waiting list, to ensure train availability for passengers. The national carrier plans to start these clone trains in a phased manner in the next 15 days.
“We have been monitoring the occupation of all the trains. Where we feel that the occupancy has increased and the waiting list is longer than 10 days, for those trains, we will run clone or duplicate trains. These trains will go ahead of existing trains, so for the particular train, the waiting list is not there, “Yadav told reporters in a virtual briefing.
Also, of the 230 trains, some trains may be canceled due to limited occupancy. While the average occupancy of these 230 special trains was 75% on average, it has now risen to more than 80%, he said.
The Center is also in talks with the West Bengal government to work out modalities to start the metro in Kolkata. “Once the next week is finished, we will start the subway in Kolkata,” he said.
BULLET TRAIN PROJECT
Amid reports of a delay in the completion of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor or bullet train project, Yadav said that the actual timeline for the project’s completion can only be provided in the next three to six months.
He said that in projects like these, there are two important things: fixing the alignment and layout, as well as getting cleanup related to the environment, forests and land acquisition. In this case, except for the acquisition of land, there is no other obstacle.
“On any linear project like the bullet train project, work can only begin when a certain amount of land is available. Within three months, we expect to acquire 95-100% of land in Gujarat. In Maharashtra we also expect land acquisition to improve a lot in the next three to six months. Once the land acquisition is clear, we can begin the physical work. Then that will be the appropriate time to re-evaluate the project implementation time, “he said.
.
