Wake up call for the railways ?

Here is a story that will set the alarm bells ringing in the Indian Railways

From The Telegraph

A consumer court has awarded Rs 50,000 as compensation to a man harassed by unauthorised passengers who barged into his reserved coach while he was travelling with his family.

The court held the Indian Railways guilty of deficiency in service and directed it to pay a litigation cost of Rs 5,000 in addition to the compensation to Sunil Kumar Gupta, who is Tihar Jail’s law officer.

Gupta said he, his wife Poonam and their two children were forced to stay awake during their overnight journey from Delhi to Jammu three years ago.

“Such a situation speaks volumes about the working of the railways as extraneous considerations on the part of officials allow unauthorised passengers to occupy reserved seats,” said New Delhi district consumer forum president K.K. Chopra. He held the railways liable for “deficiency in service, mental agony and harassment”.

The railways argued he should have approached the travelling ticket examiner (TTE) or pulled the chain. “It is the duty of the TTE to come to the compartment to... ensure that passengers who paid sleeper charges are provided berths,” the forum said.

If every passenger decides to sue the Indian Railways for this, often seen, deficiency in service, and the courts decide to award the same compensation, I expect to see the Indian Railways becoming insolvent in a matter of weeks if not months.

Only 1 in 3 Passengers in the AC Coach is a paid passenger

What is the paid occupancy of an A/C coach ?

Using the same data in the previous post,
We get average earnings per day as Rs 18,265 per coach = 54,795 for the three AC Coaches
Now Lets say there are 2 III AC coaches & 1 II AC coach. Total expected earnings ( again for 900 Km approx ) would be 2*64*800+46*1250 = 159900.

Paid Occupancy Ratio ( as a percentage ) = 54795 *100/159900 = 34.26 %

Wow .. At an average 2 in 3 AC seats are empty or unpaid ...

And from this article

Another unique initiative of his and his Officer on Special Duty, Mr Sudhir Kumar, is random and automatic upgrade of passengers without extra payment. For instance, during summer and festivals like Diwali the trains run full, but at other times AC I Class and AC II Tier coaches run only with 60-70 per cent occupancy

It looks like at an average in AC coaches 1 in 3 seats is paid, 1 in 3 is unpaid and 1 in 3 is empty.

Looking at this data the free upgrades that railways is offering makes immense sense.

One more trick that the railways can think of is to offer paid auto upgrades i.e. I want to travel by III AC but no confirmed tickets are available but confirmed tickets are available Sleeper class. Railways can offer an option to book a confirmed Sleeper class ticket while holding you on as a wait list for III AC. In case the wait listed III AC ticket does not get confirmed, You get a refund of the difference between Sleeper & III AC.

How many people can you fit in an unreserved coach ?

Wonder why the Mumbai folks make such a hue & cry about their locals being so crowded. Here is a nugget from the Railways which leads one to believe that the average unreserved compartment in the Mail/Express is twice as crowded!! .. Read further to find out how ...

From Hindu

Referring to the economics of train operations, he said a mail or express train with 16 coaches earns Rs 72 crore a year. Its eight sleeper, four unreserved and three AC classes earn Rs 19 crore, Rs 51 crore and Rs two crore respectively.

So here is the per coach breakup for each class per day
AC : 2/3 = 0.66 Crs/365 = Rs18,265
Sleeper :19/8 = 2.37 Crs/365 = Rs 65,068
Unreserved : 51/4 = 12.75 Crs/365 = Rs 3,49,915

And now assuming that the train travels for about 900 Km and the average unreserved passenger travels 100 Kms ( i.e pays a Rs 35 as fare ) we have 35*9=Rs 315 as the amount paid for the entire 900 Km.

So at any given time the average number of persons in the unreserved coach is 3,49,915 /315 = 1100 . Now that is double of Mumbai Local Peak which is about 500 .

Now you can play around with these numbers, decrease the average Km per passenger, increase the distance travelled by the train, double its frequency (i.e consider that the above figures are for a pair of up/down trains) , but you would still find that worst case it is still at least as crowded as the Mumbai Local at its peak....

Now did the railways get their statistics wrong ? Or are the Mumbai folks just a bunch of whiners ? ;)