THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The earnings from passenger business have grown by 9.43 per cent in the Thiruvananthapuram division of Southern Railway in spite of setbacks caused by disruption of long distance services, officials said.
“The revenue from passenger business has increased by Rs 72 crore as an additional 16.4 lakh passengers used the railway up to November compared to last year. This is despite the fact that a total of 424 services were cancelled due to Gujjar agitation, fire accident at Itarsi and Chennai floods,” Mr Sunil Bajpai, Divisional Railway Manager, said.
The railway claims that the increase in revenue was facilitated by a slew of upgradations.
Around 321 special trains were run by the railway and an additional 1131 new coaches were added to the existing trains between April and November 2015.
“Automatic ticket vending machine using smart cards were started in 19 stations. Coin and currency-operated machine were started at 11 stations,” the DRM said.
He appealed to passengers to use these machines without any hesitation even when staffers were not available.
To increase safety, around 32 km of old rails were replaced in Alappuzha section and regirdering has been completed for 13 bridges, the officials said.
Last year, the division added around 11 escalators in various stations and 17 more have been sanctioned.
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