Stuck people prioritise hygiene over the time after train services resume operations: survey

Train tickets for the all air-conditioned segments of several inter-city special trains that started on Tuesday including Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai, Delhi-Bhubaneswar, Delhi-Howrah have been booked in advance, with some booked for six-seven days. In several trains, the more expensive AC-1 coaches - which score higher on a space per person matrix - were fully booked, indicating a preference for hygiene.

This rush to travel in trains – despite the danger of exposing oneself to asymptomatic Covid-19 people by breathing the same air and using a common toilet – can be explained by the travellers stuck in wrong cities due to the sudden announcement of lockdown, where people did not get an opportunity to travel back. All AC train travellers were mandated to download “aarogya setu” app, which tracks Covid-19 positive patients. About 3,461 travellers moved out from Delhi to Bengaluru, Dibrugarh and Bilaspur, in three trains on Monday.

Despite some initial glitches that railways’ online ticket booking portal -- Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporations – faced when the bookings opened on Monday, tickets for some segments were sold within ten minutes.

“It ..appears that a large number of travellers (are) currently stuck in the ‘wrong’ cities, impacted by the timing of sudden lockdown…Over 31 per cent of Indians expressed to get home as their immediate priority,” IntrCity RailYatri, a brand of RailYatri that runs inter-city buses among others, said in a release. IntrCity RailYatri surveyed with about 20,000 people (aged 18-52 years), between April 15 and May 7 based on interaction with metros, tier-1, and tier-2 cities of India.

Bus and train travellers are optimistic about travel in the next three months as opposed to domestic air travellers. A surprisingly large (38 per cent) travellers displayed a high level of optimism regarding the return to normalcy. Around 35 per cent were unsure, while 25 per cent of the participants believe that it would be a while before life goes back to the way it was.

Reasons for travel

Professional or work-related travel takes top priority followed by social trip as opposed to planned holidays with 71 per cent participants indicated a drop in their planned holidays this year. Manish Rathi, CEO and Co-founder, stated, “The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the whole inter-city mobility industry in 2020 to come to a halt. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, consumer sentiments and preference have changed drastically, health safety becoming the priority for everyone. This survey was aimed at gauging the impact of the lockdown on the intercity mobility space and current customer sentiments around travel.”

Hygiene over time?

A change in customer preference towards hygiene could reflect why the pricier AC1 coaches over several daily trains got booked even before AC2 coaches. Usually, AC1 coaches – which have separate sets of four berths each – were shunned by long-distance travellers over airlines given the lesser time taken by airlines. Also, AC 1 passengers get more space per person compared to airlines.

For example, all AC first berths in the Bhubaneswar to New Delhi train were filled up till May 17 within few hours of the online booking window opening, said a railway source, adding that all tickets were sold out for May 13 in less than one hour.

“In a pre-Covid market, one of the primary concerns of the travellers was ‘on-time’ journey. However after the global pandemic, the concern has shifted towards safety and hygiene. Over 70 per cent of the respondents in the survey picked either ‘Hygiene and Sanitation’ or ‘Social Distancing’ as their top criteria. Also, people prefer Covid-19 cover insurance for their travel, according to the survey.

Non-AC trains

As on May 12, 575 Shramik special, non-AC trains had travelled carrying over 6.8 lakh people. Railways also decided to pack more people per coach in the Shramik Special trains -- allowing all berths in a coach to be occupied, said a railway official.

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