Special Trains for summer or money spinners?

If your ensuing summer vacation involves a train journey, take a closer look at the train or rather its pricing category before you book a ticket. Do not get carried away by fancy terms like “Special fare” or Suvidha (convenience) as there is a catch. If you assume that the high-sounding prefixes guarantee you something extra or a definite berth, you could end up paying much more, rather than saving money. 

On the pretext of special fare and dynamic pricing, the Railway department, has found an indirect way to mop up additional revenue without giving any value addition to travellers. That most of the special trains being operated for the summer, including the four announced on Monday evening, were ‘special fare’ trains should sufficiently explain the trick of the railways trade. Travellers could end up paying anywhere between Rs 100 and Rs 800 for an ordinary sleeper class (second) train depending on the train. If a traveller is among the lucky few to get a ticket within the first 20% of a Suvidha or dynamically priced train, you might only pay a marginally higher price, say Rs 100+ more for sleeper class ticket. After that, the price would double for every 20% tickets in the trains with the last 20% of travellers of such trains paying three times more than the normal fare. 

A senior Railway officer who conceded that Suvidha and premium tatkal were money spinners introduced by the Ministry to fill railway coffers without facing criticism, said the special fare trains would not be as expensive as Suvidha, but travellers would be paying more than normal fare for all tickets, irrespective of when they book. “Whether the ticket is booked first or last, the fare would be the same and it would be higher or equal the tatkal price of the normal fare for the travel,” the officer explained. 

Worse, travellers lose out just not on money, but also on time. The special trains would always be the first to take the hit in the event of traffic 

bottleneck. “If there is a crossing in wayside stations, scheduled regular trains would be given preferential treatment followed by freight trains (the maximum revenue getters for Railways) and hence the special trains would be detained. A special (fare) train which starts ahead of a scheduled regular train will reach the destination late,” the officer explained. Sadly, that is not all to the special train exercise. Rakes (coaches) used for special trains would be pooled from various sources and the regular trains would take all the best rakes. “If you had noticed, most of the coaches of special trains would be old ones,” another SR officer said  speaking on condition of anonymity. 

DRUCC (Divisional Railway User’s Consultative Committee) member M Kishore Kumar who claimed to have raked up the issue even in a recent DRUCC meeting said, “There might even be good response from people who struggle to get confirmed tickets at the nick of time, but it would only affect them. We have asked them (railway authorities) to operate special trains in regular fare, but to no avail. We even suggested providing value addition (like in Shatabdi and Duronto services) for those travelling in special fare trains. What railways does now is nothing but indirect revenue generation. If they increase ordinary fare in the Budget, they will be accused of hiking fare. They are making up for it by operating Suvidha and premium tatkal trains.” 

“This problem persists mostly during April – June period and festival seasons when getting rail tickets would be difficult. Whether they travel or not, some people will book four months ahead of a journey. The middle class, particularly the IT and salaried classes, suffer because their leaves and travel plans get finalised at the eleventh hour. The Railways is cashing in on them and the ticket demand by overpricing tickets. There is no justification to operate the same services for extra price, without any value addition. Also, special trains will not be punctual as they will be detained to make way for goods trains,” said another DRUCC member S Mohanram.

44 summer specials   announced for 2017. 

4 slabs for Suvidha train pricing.

However, travellers would pay more than normal fare regardless of when they book.

No value-added services as available in Shatabdi etc.

Sleeper ticket to Vijayawada from Chennai would cost Rs 375 in special tatkal train ; its Rs 290 on regular Dhanbad superfast.

Regular trains get preferential treatment over specials at crossings. 

7 hours is time taken by Howrah Express, while VM VSKP Express will cover the same distance in 8.25 hours.