New Delhi: Encouraged by the success of a premium AC special train between Delhi and Mumbai, Railways has decided to run 17 more such trains christened 'Jai Hind' in busy routes, with speed exceeding the flagship Rajdhanis and touching at just a few stations.
Cutting down on the time of travel, these trains will have passenger friendly timings keeping in mind the professional and personal needs of the large majority. Tickets will be booked under the dynamic fare mechanism scheme much like the bookings done in airlines with an advanced reservation period of only 15 days initially.
"Such dynamic pricing was widely appreciated by users and media and gave increased earnings of about 48 per cent as compared to Rajdhani services on the same sector. We are considering operation of this scheme on a larger scale," Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said in his Interim Budget speech 2014-15.
"There will be cap on price of the ticket and it will be different for different class and different sector. The speed will be more, stoppages will be less and we are looking at giving catering facilities," Member Traffic D P Pande told reporters later.
"The highest a ticket fetched under the system was Rs 38,000, so we decided to put a cap on the maximum fare," he said without disclosing further. No waitlisted ticket will be generated expect for RAC and no cancellation would be allowed.
Most of these trains are weekly or bi-weekly and would run in routes such as Howrah-Pune, Howrah-Mumbai, Kamakhya- Chennai, Mumbai-Patna, Nizamuddin-Madgaon, Sealdah-Jodhpur, Ahmedabad-Delhi Sarai Rohilla and Trivandrum-Bangalore.
Some premium trains have also been introduced to Katra and rail connectivity to the holy town is expected to be commissioned soon. Pande said the routes were selected after the Railways made an exhaustive study of the reservations in various routes.
The 17 identified routes were those which contained stations that had a waiting list throughout the year. He further said the premium trains were announced in these routes which were already connected by regular trains, so as not to deprive travelers of any section.
