Air-conditioned local – Indian Railways’ huge planning failure

On 17th November, 2020 – Central Railway introduced the first ever air conditioned EMU on the mainline between Kalyan and CSMT. With this event, the debate on AC rake fares and coach composition has started again.

A Few months ago, I had written a post on this subject in a private forum. I thought it would be great to share it here for a wider audience. Here it is:

A few facts before I get into the details – 5 Air conditioned EMUs have been turned out for WR having BHEL electricals. 6th one having underslung MEDHA electricals (based on train-18) was also despatched a few months ago, and there are no details available about the progress of it’s trials. Currently only one rake is in use by WR.

Dates when these rakes were despatched: 10/09/2019, 14/11/2019, 10/08/2019, 17/05/2019, 20/02/2019 (underslung), 31/03/2016.

Now let’s have a deep dive into the details: As you can see, a considerable time has passed even after the newest dispatch. It looks like no one in the administration is willing to bite the bullet and replace more non AC rakes with AC rakes.

Doing this will result in a huge backlash of commuters. As a result, 4 rakes worth crores of rupees are idling in carshed daily. After CR receives their share of 6 rakes, the same situation might get replicated there as well.

In my opinion, the AC rake project is completely mismanaged. There was no planning of operations & fare structure before manufacturing the rakes.

Someone sitting in Rail bhawan ordered manufacture of full AC rakes, and they were manufactured without any study of the optimal way of introducing them into service.

This has resulted into a great mess where the existing rakes cannot be replaced with AC rakes. Had there been a systematic study, IR would have realised that-

1. New slots are not available for services, hence existing services will have to be replaced.
2. If 1 is done, then commuters won’t be happy at all, as it will lead to overcrowding in other services.
3. So semi AC locals may be needed
4. If at all they implement 1, then pricing the services above existing first class fares & expecting metro like ridership is foolish
5. Hence, a long term coordinated plan of action is necessary for introduction of AC rakes which will address concerns of all stakeholders.

Current situation of fares & ridership is somewhat like this:

1. The fare of AC rake is 1.3 times FC fares. That makes journey tickets out of bounds for more than 90% pax. Hence non peak direction & holiday services run virtually empty.
2. Thanks to the ridiculously cheap MSTs, the season tickets are easily affordable to almost anyone who can afford a first class season ticket. That results in peak direction services getting very good patronage.

Now coming to some possible solutions:

There are 2 ways of handling this. First is to introduce partial AC rakes and convert all rakes to partial AC. Let us look into details of this-

a) Existing rakes have electricals manufactured by Siemens, Bombardier & Medha. IR will need to work with these vendors to develop systems for partial AC rakes compatible with existing rakes. If the coach frame design permits, converting some existing coaches into AC coaches can be looked at, instead of manufacturing new coaches. Many Siemens rakes are more than 12 years old. Economic feasibility of converting them into AC coaches will have to be examined.

b) First class (FC) should be abolished and AC class should be introduced in its place, with more space in rake than is currently given for first class.

Second way is to go the metro way, and introduce full AC rakes on a large scale. For this, if conversion of existing rakes is not possible then transferring them to Delhi, Chennai & Kolkata will have to be looked into.

But one thing is for sure – Whatever they do, IR needs to sit and make a foolproof plan first before implementing anything. Otherwise it will result in a disaster like the present one.

For both the above ways there will be a transition period in which some rakes will be running with old configuration & some will be modified.

The transition should be handled smoothly with proper communication through various channels.

The existence of first class will have to be given a hard relook. If full AC rakes are introduced alongside non AC rakes, then FC should be abolished from non AC rakes.

However there should be an adequate number of AC rakes as replacement for FC.

Some suggest having 2 classes of AC coaches. I feel that won’t work. There is hardly anything that will be a distinguishing factor. It will be just like current FC & SC – cushioned seats being the only differentiator.

Fare:

The current fare structure is not at all feasible. The problem with fares is applying a non AC fare formula to AC. It has made journey tickets ridiculously overpriced while MST are ridiculously cheap.

They need to reduce journey ticket fare to lure non daily passengers & hike MST rates to remain viable operationally. It needs to be more on the lines of metro fares to get decent ridership. 

The journey ticket should be priced lower than first class tickets. This will encourage the occasional commuters & non peak hour commuters to use the rakes as well.

However MSTs should cost at least 5 return journeys more than non AC MSTs. This is the model generally followed by metro.

Well folks, those are my thoughts on this subject. My way of expressing them has not been the most organised, pardon me for that!

Courtesy: MRVC Mania – MRVC rakes & more!