Dynamic tatkal ticket pricing to hit Diwali rail users most
Ordinary class-II sleeper ticket fare might increase up to 150% in the premium special trains
By : k. karthikeyan
Update: 2014-10-05 05:24 GMT
Chennai: Make sure to book your tickets at the earliest or be prepared to pay through your nose if you intend to secure a berth in some of the special trains southern railway (SR) announced on Saturday for Diwali. The longer you delay that booking, the more you pay.
Half the special trains (totally 12) SR announced on Saturday to clear the extra rush of passengers for Diwali are ‘premium’ super fast trains. Add the new dynamic Tatkal ticket pricing policy (premium trains) to that and you will be paying 50 per cent more than the premium fare.
Two trains each to Tirunelveli and Nagercoil from Egmore and two connecting Chennai Central and Coimbatore will be operated as premium special trains a few days ahead of Diwali.
According to a rough estimate, the ordinary class-II sleeper ticket fare might increase up to 150 per cent in the premium special trains from the date of opening of reservation to the closest day before the date of journey.
You are ‘doomed’ if it is an executive (AC – I, II and III or first class) ticket in the premium special trains. The executive class fare in the premium special trains could rise by as much as 200 per cent. Travellers can easily be paying in excess of Rs 600 to travel to Coimbatore from Chennai by train for merely booking the ticket late.
Highly-placed SR officials, who revealed the statistics, admitted, on condition of anonymity, that there would be no value addition in the premium trains, which, at best, would get crossing priority (at signals) and have fewer stoppages, thereby reducing the journey time by a maximum of 15 minutes.
Picking holes in the new pricing mechanism and operation of premium special trains, former member of Zonal Railway Users Consultative Committee (ZRUCC) S. Mohanram said, "Most travellers are from lower and middle income group. The new policy and the premium special trains will only burden them and reduce their Deepavali spend. Why should ordinary people spend two times more on their travel for no value addition? Who would want to pay 200 per cent more for train ticket just to save half-an-hour?" and accused the cash-strapped railways of fleecing people to manage its accounts.
In fact, air travel might be relatively cheaper on Deepavali eve. A comparison of air fares in a low cost carrier and AC-I ticket fare a day before Deepavali (assuming a mere 100 per cent rise in executive train ticket fare, officials project it to be anything up to 200 per cent) in one of premium special trains running between Chennai and Coimbatore revealed that travellers would be paying a few hundred rupees less for a flight (Rs 3,380 per head from Chennai to Coimbatore in a low-cost carrier on October 19 - Rs 1,915 for AC-I in super fast Cheran Express the same day). It does not stop there. One cannot book tickets in the premium special trains if he or she is not a registered IRCTC user as the new rule introduced to eliminate touts mandates booking premium train tickets only online.