There are lot of small things can be done. (1) Rounding of fares: All passenger fares to be in denomination of Rs 5,10,15 and so on.It will make passenger to purchase tickets easily and avoid the problem of change. (2) Work out occupancy ratio: Every class Ist or 2nd or 3rd , whether these are running full or empty or less occupied. I believe Ist or 2nd class are not fully occupied and spending more money on less passengers. If these compartment are converted or replaced with 3rd class many problems can be solved. (3) Introduce lot of new ideas from Metro Coaches to Compartment of Local Trains . (4)Introduce Local Trains between many Suburban areas of many large cities.
To improve efficiency, safety, better services money is needed. Without adequate resources, any amount of planning will not see light. Better sense should prevail from all quarters - planners, executors, customers etc. The moment a fare increase is done there would be protest from all the corners. You can not ask the dog to jump when all its four legs tied down
good to read your article on indian railways. Please make the railways as public Sector organization, dis-invest the shares, list in indian markets. Sell the shares with huge premium, Govt will get huge funds, with these funds, infrastructure, new railway lines, bogies, engines, electrification works can be improved. Due to less allocation of funds, non increase of railway fares since almost 10 years (except last year) indian railways are not able to modernize the facilities etc.
You can consider to outsource the maintenance of railway stations (as the aviation industry done it)and fully privatize the ticket bookings, advertisements and sell the unused railway lands for development etc. Allow the private investors to own trains and operate them, railways can charge licence fee so that normal man can travel in trains without booking the tickets in advance (60 days or tatkal etc).
Introduce the privatization bill in the parliament and push disinvestment plans of indian railways.
he has to tap resources outside the government --------------------
Business processes in Indian Railway can be segmented to four major segments. Passenger, Freight, Lines and Signals, Supplier industrial units.
Freight is potentially growth bottleneck, hence massive investment for up-gradation and expansion is necessary. Since it is profitable, induction of private players is an option to tap resources for rapid change in rolling stocks, terminal facilities and business linkages. Likewise divestment and diversification of sourcing can reduce investment burden for technology and product upgrade.
Passenger services requires subsidy support, ownership retention by state is inevitable. Lines and signaling requires a holistic approach for safety, reliability, handling disruptions. Land acquisition issues for expansion is also best handled via state ownership. By giving up on freight and supply services, Lines and Signaling can earn considerably from user charges to be profitable and invest on nationwide modernization.
A layman who knows little about railways can offer a different perspective. It may or may not be very practical, but in the brain storming spirit, worth considering; for one thought leads to another.
Suresh Prabhu should provide permanent seat belts/ restraining belts/ Safety Harness attached to the outside shell of the train compartments and on the roof. First step to improve rail safety :-)
(1) Railway based tourism - Come up with nice desirable packages for tourism, of very high quality and well maintained to promote tourism in India while earning / galvanizing sectors. Identify and mega-plan this one.
(2) Dynamic introduction of trains on known routes as well as dynamic increase in number of Bogies (with engines of appropriate strengths) according to number of interested passengers.
(3) Dynamic pricing but know that its unlikely to work on long routes: If fare for travelling from Bangalore to NDLS is INR 6000 for travelling for two days, then I may as well as pay for flight and travel in 2 hours.
(3) Improve connectivity inside (inter-city) as well as intra-city (inside the city itself) of short length trains that have massive number of people travelling on them: For e.g.., between Ahmedabad-Mumbai, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Kanpur/lucknow, Patna-Calcutta, Madras-Bangalore, Hyderabad-Bangalore.
Currently, it has become more popular for (private) buses to make huge profit making business on those tracks.
It should be easy for people to board train from several points in the city, (with punctuality in timings), and these inter-city trains must move quickly while stopping at several points in the city making railways more accessible while moving in city.
(4) More efficient scheduling of railways and connectivity of trains taking into consideration total number of passengers utilizing the railway tracks and passenger load effectively.
Re: IDEAS to improve railways - 1
by shailesh on Nov 18, 2014 08:49 PM
More ideas: (5) Adherence to schedules / timings: Improve reliability and hence its use for business purposes.
(6) Reducing long distance train timings by by-passing smaller stations /tracks using additional parallel tracks and improved coordination between trains: making it preferred mode for longer distance travels,
(7) Current modes of coordination between trains are very outdated and need to be updated to make track usages efficient and timings faster and less accident prone.
(8) Long distance trains between big stations should park somewhere outside the main station and should be served using efficient city commutes / buses from there to different points in the city. Thus, overall traffic and congestion is reduced in / around city station as well as it is possible for long distance trains to save times on them and schedule them in efficient manner.
(9) Calculate the total load from and to big stations to study how working on them / with them can solve many problems systematically.
(10) Increase # of general bogies but check traffic, levy fines to non--followers appropriately. (11) Maximum load per passenger enforcement using random checks, extra payment for more load.
Re: Re: IDEAS to improve railways - 1
by on Nov 19, 2014 06:54 AM
First and foremost, clean toilets in the train. Swachcha Indian Railways is first required before we try Swachcha Bharat.
One good thing that Mr. Suresh Prabhu can do it is to keep the railway passenger fares on par with bus fares, and maintain the cleanliness, time and increase the periodicity. Since public can afford to pay the bus fares without any grumbling, this augments the ailing railways. For shorter destinations and particularly to the poor and below poverty line people, maintain the present fare structure and reduce the number of bogies, however keep the frequency more. Similarly, the goods charges too can be on par with other road transport operators.
Everything that has a tag of IIM seems to be godsend knowledge in the semiliterate upper middle classes, now a days!
Sambrani's credentials of teaching at IIM and setting up of IRMA doesn't qualify him enough to reek out advice to Indian Railways in this manner without doing his home work.
Sambrani must first understand why the Indian Govt since independence has corporatised, (if there is any word like that in the first place) according to Sambrani, Air Services into IA & AI but kept Railways as a Government department.
National integrity is the first objective for which you need every poor Indians acceptance and all the poor use Railways unlike the AIrways which is used by the well off sections and precisely that is why Airways are corporatised (sic).
Thank Gawd, Indian politicians didn't hear to the arm chair advice of the likes of Sambrani lest the country would not be like this in a united way today for Sambrani to give advice.
When oil was discovered first in Assam in India, Assamese wanted to carve out a separate nation so that they can be like any rich middle eastern country with its oil sources.
Had Railways not transported grains at free of cost and coal at highly subsidised rates there would have been famine in some parts of the country and food surplus in some other parts just like the great Bengal famine under the British where millions had died of hunger while there is surplus food available in some other part of India.
