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A recent study by RailYatri.in reveals that over 10 lakh people fail to travel daily due to unavailability of train tickets.
The demand-supply mismatch on long distance trains has been a well-known assumption for long. There are more people wanting to travel in a particular train than the available number of seats. But the scale of this mismatch has never been quantified. Since January 2016, RailYatri.in has been tracking train ticket booking patterns across the country to analyse the mismatch.
Based on the data gathered from train travellers across the nation, the study revealed that there are nearly 10-12 lakh potential travellers who are unable to travel due to non-confirmed tickets on a daily basis. These are people whose waitlist tickets did not get confirmed.
Percentage wise, this would translate to nearly 13 per cent of long distance train travellers daily. In the peak travel season, this number increases to about 19 per cent. Data scientists at RailYatri.in used mathematical models to analyse the travel plans reported by over 30 lakh travellers from over 3,100 railway stations looking for seats in nearly 2,800 trains. Using prediction models, RailYatri.in estimated its overall impact across the nation on a daily basis .
“While we were always aware of the demand-supply mismatch in train travel, the scale of surplus demand, as brought out by this study, has been an eye opener for us,” says Manish Rathi, CEO & Co-founder RailYatri.in .
“The ability of citizens to travel in an unconstrained manner is an essential spoke in the wheel of any nation’s economy. Despite an increase in several transport options, trains continue to be the most preferred mode for long distance travel. It is tempting to think that adding more trains would be the ideal solution. However, this would require hundreds of more trains to run every day. Considering the already overloaded network, the chances of a substantial number of more trains being added in the near future is difficult,” adds Rathi.
As part of this study, RailYatri.in has come up with a list of major stations and the percentage of travellers who booked tickets and yet could not travel.
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