Low occupancy costs Railways dear amid Covid surge

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 29

Spiralling Covid-19 cases due to the second wave of the pandemic and its related restrictions in different parts of the country have prompted people to desist from travelling. This is financially costing the Railways dear.

Barring trains heading to the eastern part of the country, most of these are not running to their capacity. Occupancy in trains has drastically gone down, especially in the incoming trains, and gone up in the outgoing trains indicating the trend of people moving out of the city following intensification of the second wave of the pandemic-induced restrictions.

Sources in the Railways said the occupancy in the Golden Temple train and Deluxe (Amritsar to Mumbai) is full but on their return journey, the occupancy has gone down to half.

Earlier, almost all trains to Delhi were running to their capacity. Now, both incoming and outgoing Shatabdis are running at 50-40 per cent occupancy.

Even very economical passenger train to Pathankot is ferrying around 200 passengers per day. The train has a seating capacity of 600. Travel in the train costs a passenger less than Rs50 but the same journey in a bus costs three times more.

Trains heading to the eastern part of the country like Howrah Mail, Chattisgarh, Shaheed Express (Amritsar to Darbhanga) are running at full capacity, indicating the rush of migrants. Upon their return journey, the occupancy remains half. Before the pandemic getting a seat in these trains used to be an uphill task as these popular trains used to invariably run at full capacity.