Lok Sabha Question No. 574 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2015-12-02
Subject: Decline in Passengers
Ministry: RAILWAYS
Asked by: K. C. VENUGOPAL

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO.574

## TO BE ANSWERED ON 02.12.2015

## DECLINE IN PASSENGERS

574.  SHRI K.C.VENUGOPAL:

Will the Minister of RAILWAYS be pleased to state:

- (a)  whether  the  Government  has  taken  note  of  the  considerable decline in the number of passengers travelling in trains, and if so, the details thereof;
- (b) the ratio of decline in the number of passengers in trains during the last three years and the reasons for this diminishing trend;
- (c) the measures that have been taken by the Government to check this trend;
- (d) whether the Government is aware of the existence of uneasiness of passengers right from the booking of train tickets due to many technical problems; and
- (e) if so, the steps taken by the Government to tackle this trend?

## ANSWER

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS

(SHRI MANOJ SINHA)

- (a) to (e):  A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.

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STATEMENT  REFERRED  TO  IN  REPLY  TO  PARTS  (a)  TO  (e)  OF UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 574 BY SHRI K.C.VENUGOPAL TO BE ANSWERED IN LOK SABHA ON 02.12.2015 REGARDING DECLINE IN PASSENGERS

(a) & (b): The passenger traffic details for the last three years is as under:-

| Financial Year   |   Number of passengers ( in millions) | Variation over last year ( in %)   |
|------------------|---------------------------------------|------------------------------------|
| 2012-13          |                                  8421 |                                    |
| 2013-14          |                                  8397 | -0.29                              |
| *2014-15         |                                  8224 | -2.06                              |

The  decline  in  passenger  traffic  can  be  attributed  to  various factors  including  the  changed  norms/regulations  in  the  issue  of concessional  tickets  particularly in the  case  of  Izzat  MSTs, improvement  in  road  infrastructure  offering  better  and  faster connectivity  leading  to  increase  in  the  number  of  personal  and commercial vehicles,  diversion  of  passenger  traffic  to  metro  rail projects in cities, impact of natural disasters like floods and heavy monsoons, closure of certain sections etc.

## (c):  The measures taken for improving passenger traffic include:-

- i. Augmentation  of  on-board  capacity  by  attachment  of additional coaches, running of special trains during festivals and holidays, running of Suvidha trains etc.
- ii. Organising intensive ticket checking drives including fortress checks etc.

- iii. Augmentation of ticket selling capacity through operation of Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM), Cash-Coin & Smart Card operated Ticket Vending Machines (CoTVM), mobile ticketing, utilising the services of ticketing agents like Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sewaks (JTBS), Station Ticket Booking Agents (STBA), Yatri Ticket Suvidha Kendra (YTSK) etc.
2. (d) & (e): Some  instances of inconvenience faced by the passengers while booking of train tickets due to technical problems do come to the notice of this office. The problems faced by  passengers  are  generally  in  the  nature  of  transaction  failure while booking or while making the payment, difficulty in logging in, forced  log  out  etc.  Keeping  the  same  in  view,  new  e-ticketing system (NGET) was  launched on 28.04.2014 with  enhanced capacity to book 7200 tickets per minute and 1.20 lakh concurrent users compared to the  earlier capacity of 2000 tickets per minute with  40000  concurrent  users.  The  capacity  of  system  has  been further enhanced to 15000 tickets per minute and 3 lakh concurrent users by adding 5 new  Itanium servers at the integration layer and adding 6TB of memory space.

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