Come October, and the Indian Railways will offer reservation on demand on select long-distance routes- and that too without leveling any extra charge to passengers.
To begin with, Railways are planning to introduce the idea of reservation on demand on sectors like Mumbai-
New Delhi, lucknow-New Delhi, Mumbai-Howrah, and Chennai-New Delhi. If successful, the scheme would be implemented pan-India for all premier, mail and express trains by 2020.
While railway traffic has increased 20 times since Independence, railway infrastructure has gone up merely by 2.25 times. Thus there is a wide gap between the availability of berths and number of reservation seekers.
The Ministry of Railways has decided to undertake a massive capacity augmentation drive on major trunk routes. Member Traffic Railway Board Md Jamshed said the railways has planned to provide reservation for passengers on demand and simultaneously increasing the speed of all trains.
“This will be done on sectoral basis soon and by 2020 Indian Railways would offer reserved tickets to any long distance traveller,” Jamshed told The Pioneer on the sidelines of a function at Rail Bhawan on Tuesday. On this occasion, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu flagged off one train each from Hubbali to Varanasi, and another one from Hubbali to Mysuru in the poll bound Karnataka.
A senior railway official said to start with the Railway Board is considering to implement this reservation on demand services on routes where there is not enough pressure and the scheme could be manageable within existing resources.
Of the total of 67 sectors in the country identified as congestion network, Allahabad-Mughal Sarai sector on the main New Delhi-Patna-Howrah is the most congested network.
“In the beginning, we cannot think of providing such a facility on congested route such as New-Delhi Patna, Mumbai-Patna, and New Delhi Kolkatta due to mismatch of the volume of passengers and lack of infrastructure, “ said the official.