All down

I happened to travel up and down via a long distance train bounded to a city, which is also represented by the central railway minister. And if you ask me to give a rating to the journey it was all down and no up. Up train was below expectation and so was the down. The journey was a real hell, journey being long; with hell number of stoppage; now imagine the condition of washroom and wash basins. Utilities were getting cleaned frequently but I didn’t find them sufficient to take the load of the passengers as there were double the occupants as compared to the number of seats.

The trip was not planned as a result I couldn’t get accommodation of AC sleepers and I was forced to compromise on the non air conditioned sleepers. The coach was a real torture room; one out of the three fans was missing and whatever was left was not moving, they were simply rotating at snail speed; humid climate adding more to woe. There were no arrangement wherein a passenger can help himself in taking the meal neither I could see water bottle and magazine holders. Berths were hard enough to ensure that nobody could take a sound sleep and hence no threat of theft occurring while passengers are asleep. Cockroaches roaming in the compartment were sufficient to justify it as a torture room.

Washrooms were in a pathetic stage, stinking like anything and were adamant enough to get closed during the use. I tried with one of them and found that the door ditched the latches and was keen to free him from the compartment, the entry door were all rusted and at a first sight appeared very lethal and dangerous.

My woe doesn’t end here; entry and exit to the compartment was free, everybody and anybody could enter the compartment and leave at his wish, there were hell lot of ferry walas from the pantry staffs and other local vendors as well, lot of noise for tea, coffee, snacks and what not. Tobacco based products are not sold on railway station and neither in the train, but vendors were making a mockery of this rule.

Long distance train have very few stop but this train… my god… it is too old to run a long distance! Wanted to take rest at each and every station as a result it was running late by 6 hours, after some chit chat with the fellow passenger I discovered that the train has a normal habit of running late, and I realized that this might be the reason of pathetic condition of the coaches.

Whatever might be the reasons but the journey was a real nightmare.

Addressing core problem

With Indian railways leaving no stone unturned to facilitate its customer in booking railway ticket the million dollar question remains unanswered. Are there sufficient allocations available to book.

There were days when railway reservation was all manual and every booking counter was having a specific quota to book, but with the advent of computerized booking the quota got abolished, booking process became more transparent and making reservation became few clicks job thanks to online reservation facility. The next revolution in reservation is sought to be happening from cell phone, mobile vans and retail outlets which will be authorized to Book the railway ticket.

Latest buzz in the same league is The “Mushkil Aassan” mobile van which has been introduced with the idea of taking the issuance of computerized tickets both reserved and un-reserved to the grass roots. It will work from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm from Monday to Saturday at different locations every day, while Sunday will be utilized for its maintenance. The cost of the ticket will be the same as that of tickets purchased from the usual Passenger Reservation System counters.

All steps whether online reservation, retail ticket selling, mobile reservation or “Mushkil Aassan” are taken to give the customer an ease for getting reservation but the core Problem remains unattended that “Are there enough seats available for booking ?” There is always a low availability of accommodation (seat reservation) to tackle this there are selected numbers of trains available to ferry between any of the prominent cities causing a long waiting for reservation throughout the year.

The basic observation I had is all those cities who have air connectivity between them are important cities in some or other context (Airlines companies always operate on profitable route) and getting railway reservation between such cities is always a luck affair, One has to content himself with Waiting list or Reservation against cancellation tickets provided he is lucky enough to get even those confirmations.

The Core problem of railway passenger is to get confirm reservation and not in applying for reservation, Until and unless we work for solving the core problem the facilitation is a mere showoff.

Image source: www.paklinks.com

How fast is fast?

I’m getting into a complex the way china is reveling its cards whether it’s the GDP figures, non conventional energy forecast, reduction in carbon emission or gold reserves, and my complex was at peak with the latest buzz of “World fastest train” running in China. The train ferry between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the country’s south which is approximately 1,068 kms at the average speed of 350 km/hour. This distance will be covered by the high-speed train in two hours forty five minutes. I can’t digest these figures and forced me to think that “Mere Desh ka number kab ayega” when my country will have such trains.

If we take into consideration the Indian Railways figures, the figures are impressive but the speed and availability of accommodation is disappointing. Indian Railways has one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tones of freight daily. It is one of the world's largest commercial or utility employers, with more than 1.4 million employees. The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country, covering 6,909 stations over a total route length of more than 63,327 kilometers.

Having said this there is low availability of accommodation (seat reservation) and average speed of trains are not more than 50 km/ hour. There are selected numbers of trains available to ferry between any of the prominent cities causing a long waiting for reservation throughout the year. A reason for Low number of passenger trains might be because Indian railways earn more revenue from freight as compared to passenger’s earnings. According to a statistics 65 paise out of every rupee earned comes from freight earnings, Passenger earnings accounted for 26 paise while other coaching earnings, sundry earnings and miscellaneous receipts gave three paise each.

This made me think that why can’t the two things club together, passenger and freight coaches, this will increase the frequency of number of passenger trains available between cities and will also speed up the freight movement and will save a lot of time (remember time is money). Additionally it will put the resources (infrastructure) to an optimum use by making use of it throughout the day. Increasing number of frequency will also boost the revenue of passenger and freight.

The fastest train in India (Shatabdi express) was announced approximately 11 years ago and since then there is no announcement of any new train which is at a better speed than this. Does it take so many years to Increase in terms of speed and infrastructure?

But I know these are thoughts and it doesn’t cost me to think and suggest, on the other side officials might have thought of this a long back but there might be some practical and technical problems because of which they have not implemented this system.

Statistical figures of earning: livemint.com
Network strength: wikipedia.org
Image source: gerryriskin.com