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Monday, August 18, 2008

Travellers shift to trains as airfares soar

With low cost carriers becoming increasingly expensive, frequent fliers, particularly between Delhi and Mumbai, have switched to train travel.

In July, there was a 47 per cent jump in earnings from reserved tickets in trains originating across North India.

"In May and June, the number of passengers who went from Delhi to Mumbai was 33.7 per cent more than usual," said a senior railway official on condition of anonymity "We had to augment capacity in every train to carry that additional load."

Fourteen extra coaches have been attached to 12 Rajdhanis. Twelve Shatabdis have got 19 extra coaches, while around 50 mail/express trains have got 80 additional compartments.

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Monday, August 4, 2008

Aboard the Beijing Bullet, lessons for Delhi

IN LESS than two minutes, the Harmony silently glided past the top speed of India's fastest trains, the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi.

A week before the most definitive moment in China's modern history as a rising superpower - the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing at 8.08 pm on 08.08.08 - I bought a second-class ticket out of the capital. HTs daily dispatch for the Beijing Olympics began aboard China's latest and the world's fastest intercity bullet train that will shuttle football fans between inland Beijing and coastal Tianjin at a record 350 kmph in 30 minutes. By 2013, a high-speed railway wn cut train travel between BeijingShanghai from 10 hours to five. I skipped the media test ride to line up as a common commuter between inland Beijing and China's third-largest city and its busiest northern seaport about 135 km away The Made-in China bullet trains cut the com- mute from a previous 70 minutes at 200-250 kmph to 30 minutes. The new commute combines Beijing and Tianjin into one city Chinese researcher Zhou Gansi told China Central Television. "It can dramatically change people's way of life." The local train from Mumbai's southern financial hub to its northern suburbs takes twice as long. Imagine the potential of a Delhi-Chandigarh or Mumbai-Ptme train giving professionals the choice of a comfortable daily intercity commute instead of migration. The fastest Mumbai-Pune train takes three hours to cover 192 km. The seven-year infrastructure revolution inside India's largest and most powerful neighbour goes beyond its 37 Olympic stadiums.

My journey began at Asia's largest railway station (by one estimate, the size of 20 football fields) that opened in south Beijing last week with none of the fanfare that would accompany such an event if it happened in India.

After all, Beijing opened the world's biggest international airport terminal this year, to welcome over 10,000 athletes and modern China's biggest-ever influx of foreigners (about half a million) from August 8-24.

The solar panel-roofed station looks like an international airport, and is bigger than the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium that will host the opening ceremony. As commuters bought instant noodles they prepared with hot water from the station taps, I was the only Indian in the crowd, struggling to decipher Chinese signs.

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posted by PressMart Team at 3:10 PM 0 Comments