15-minute leeway, still one in 3 trains misses punctuality target set by Indian Railways

Of the 6.22 lakh trains subjected to audit, 1.82 lakh trains did not meet the punctuality threshold of 15 minutes set by the Indian Railways, according to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament.

The committee on Wednesday highlighted that the delays were reported even though the Indian Railways prescribes a very high (15-minute punctuality threshold) as compared to other countries like Japan (few seconds) and Netherlands (three minutes).

It asked the government to revise the 15-minute timeline that comes with another 15-minute delay allowance. The existing allowance of a 15-minute delay within the Railways’ punctuality benchmark further dilutes the accuracy of performance assessment.

“Any consumer, a passenger travelling in a train or sending goods in freight train expects the train to reach the destination on the time given in the time table. The extra threshold of 15 minutes is too large. The current yardstick for punctuality being adopted by the Railways does not reflect the expectation of the people,” the panel said, recommending the Railways to review and revise punctuality assessment through integrated monitoring at originating or intermediate stations, along with the termination station.

A punctuality threshold defines the maximum allowable delay for a service to still be considered “on time”. The Indian Railways measures punctuality with a 15-minute threshold at terminating stations as against stricter thresholds, followed by other major countries.

The PAC noted that other countries follow a much stricter threshold. Notably, the yardstick in Japan is in seconds and a train arriving before the scheduled time is also considered as punctuality loss.

“In Netherlands, it is three minutes; in Germany and Russia, it is five minutes; and in the Great Britain, it is 10 minutes. Despite a low benchmark and higher threshold of 15 minutes, the punctuality of mail/express trains only declined from 79 per cent (2012-13) to 69.23 per cent (2018-19) that too at the terminating stations only. The committee notes that out of 6.22 lakh trains, 1.82 lakh trains did not meet the punctuality yardstick of 15 minutes,” said the panel.

The committee further noted that on an average 13,15,456 trains were reported through the Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) per annum and out of these, only 29.64 per cent of trains (3,89,877 trains) reached on time (RT). As many as 20.17 per cent of trains (2,65,391 trains) arrived before time (BT) and the remaining 50.19 per cent of trains (6,60,188 trains) were delayed.

An Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) is a comprehensive software platform, used by the Indian Railways, to digitally manage and monitor passenger train operations, from punctuality and scheduling to maintenance and asset deployment, integrating various railway systems.

The punctuality of trains during 2015-16 was 77.51 percent, while it was 69.23 percent during 2018-19. However, there has been a significant improvement in the punctuality performance of trains and it rose to 90.48 percent during 2021-22.

The punctuality performance of the Railways during 2024-25 (up to August) was recorded at 78.67 percent as compared to 73.62 percent in 2023-24.