The Hindu Business Line : Huge summer rush: SER to analyse demand pattern

SUMMER holidays and mad scramble for railway tickets to cooler destinations is nothing new for the Railways. But when the demand for tickets is nearly totally skewed in one direction, it calls for special efforts.

The South Eastern Railway (SER), the one time blue chip of the Indian Railways, is facing this summer an unprecedented rush in all its Chennai-Bangalore bound trains, and the wait-list queues are getting unusually longer, in keeping with the rise in the mercury, despite the summer specials and additional coaches.

According to the SER top brass, coupled with the general summer rush and the stream of students going for joint entrance exams at various centres, the huge number of people going for medical treatment to Chennai, particularly Shankar Netralaya and Apollo Hospitals, and to CMC Hospital in Vellore, has turned the situation virtually unmanageable.

The SER has augmented capacity in all the trains, with Coromandel Express, the prima donna among Chennai-bound trains, already having 24 coaches — the maximum that can be placed in this busy Howrah-Chennai corridor.

As part of an Indian Railway strategy to tackle such situations, the SER is now analysing the demand patterns of all trains for identifying the less used ones, and prepare a comprehensive strategy. The data analysis, being done for a pre-set period, may lead to a change in composition of Chennai-bound trains.

Says Mr Binayak P. Swain, Chief Passenger Transportation Manager, SER: "Coromandel Express, with 121 per cent commercial utilisation, is always preferred because of its convenient arrival time at Chennai Central in the evening for all onward connections to Bangalore or Tiruchi or Coimbatore. Coromandel Express, Howrah Chennai Mail, Bombay Mail via Nagpur and the Gitanjali Express (to Mumbai) are the passenger work horses of the SER, which is now seriously engaged in a serious exercise to get the best out of the less patronised trains.

Mr Swain said the average length of the long distance trains is determined on the basis of terminal facilities at both destination ends, and also the platform capacity of the stoppage points.

Pointing out that the SER has been able to manage this summer rush in a much better manner now than in the past, he said the trick was to have longer trains without eating onto the line capacity of the busy corridor. All stopping stations cannot accommodate 24 coaches, and this is a major constraint.

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Huge summer rush: SER to analyse demand pattern