Indian Railways to introduce premium AC trains

The Indian Railways has decided to run 17 more premium AC-special trains between Delhi and Mumbai.
Howrah Bridge, Kolkata
Howrah Bridge, Kolkata

These additional new trains will ply on busy routes, while the railways will also explore the possibility of running semi-high speed trains trains between 160-200kmph to Chandigarh and Agra.

The premium train to Mumbai, to handle the extra rush during Christmas and New Year, had fetched an increased earnings of about 48% as compared to Mumbai Rajdhani. The fares for this train were charged under dynamic fare mechanism scheme much like airlines. “Such dynamic pricing was widely appreciated by users and media and gave increased earnings of about 48% as compared to Rajdhani services on the same sector. We are considering operation of this scheme on a larger scale,” Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said in his Interim Budget speech 2014-15.

The 17 premium trains will run from different parts of the country, which are considered high density routes. The Minister said there are seasonal and occasion-specific instances when demand for travel by certain train goes up and passengers, on such occasions, should be prepared to pay more to undertake journey.

Most of these trains are weekly or bi-weekly and would run on routes such as Howrah-Pune, Howrah-Mumbai, Kamakhya-Chennai, Mumbai-Patna, Nizamuddin-Madgaon, Sealdah-Jodhpur, Ahmedabad-Delhi Sarai Rohilla and Trivandrum-Bangalore. Some premium trains have also been introduced to Katra and rail connectivity to the holy town is expected to be commissioned soon.