CHENNAI: The Southern Railway on Saturday announced that it had recorded the highest passenger occupancy on special trains during the 2025-26 financial year.
A release from the Southern Railway here said that it had operated 2,513 trips of 229 special train services, carrying 32.98 lakh passengers and earning Rs 243.22 crore in revenue.
The average occupancy of these special trains is 1,312 passengers per trip, which is significantly higher than the Indian Railways’ average of 894 passengers per trip.
Southern Railway emerged as the best-performing railway zone in the country on this key operational efficiency parameter.
The largest share of special train operations during 2025-26 was concentrated in Southern sectors, South Western sectors and long-distance inter-zonal routes, enabling Southern Railway to effectively manage seasonal travel demand and reduce waitlists.
Special train services were strategically deployed across high- demand corridors connecting Southern Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengaluru, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with Eastern, Western, and Northern India.
Apart from the reserved special trains, Southern Railway operated unreserved special trains to meet the demand from passengers.
The release further added that continuous monitoring of wait-listed positions of regular trains, reservation trends, passenger demand patterns and average occupancy levels of special trains across various sectors like Chennai - Kanyakumari, Chennai - Thiruvananthapuram.
Whenever a special train is introduced or notified, passengers who are on the waitlist for the same sector in the corresponding regular trains are informed through SMS about the availability of the special train.
This has provided passengers with an alternative travel option, facilitated point-to-point (P2P) traffic diversion to the special train and improved occupancy in the special trains.