The flop show of CST-Ernakulam and CST-Tirunelveli premium fare trains is forcing Central Railway officials give the whole plan a re-think. A delegation of passengers under the aegis of the All Thane Malayalee Association (ATMA) met senior CR officials on Thursday asking that the remaining trips of both the trains be changed into superfast ones so that more people can benefit from them.
The flop show of CST-Ernakulam and CST-Tirunelveli premium fare trains is forcing Central Railway officials give the whole plan a re-think. A delegation of passengers under the aegis of the All Thane Malayalee Association (ATMA) met senior CR officials on Thursday asking that the remaining trips of both the trains be changed into superfast ones so that more people can benefit from them.
While CR officials refused to get into a debate, some officials of the operations and the commercial departments said that they would be monitoring the trains after April 12 to see if occupancy picks. This, officials told dna, is because by then schools and colleges will be closed and the rush to Kerala, Karnataka and Goa will begin in right earnest.
dna had front-paged the issue in its Wednesday edition by highlighting that railways was charging premium rates despite these trains not even reaching the 20 per cent occupancy mark.
Speaking to dna, Sashikumar Nair of ATMA said, "We don't prefer these premium trains because they have odd departure and arrival timings. Secondly, the stops are so limited that hardly any passenger wanting to go to Kerala gets benefitted. It is better they are converted to normal superfast trains."
The 02057 CST-Tirunelveli Premium halts at Thane, Ratnagiri, Madgaon, Shoranur, Ernakulam and Thiruvanathapuram. The 02065 CST-Ernakulam premium halts at Thane, Madgaon, Mangalore, Kozhikode and Thrissur.
The two trains have become a case study for the railways as it is possibly the first time that a pair of trains is being run as a premium only in one direction. The trains are ordinary ones when they return from Southern Railway.
"It is also to see whether the premium concept is being spread too thin by the railways. Declaring every special train as a premium one is not the best thing to do; especially, if there is no difference in speed, quality of service between premium and non-premium trains," said a senior railway official.
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