New Delhi: The Railway Board is all set replace AC 2 Tier Coaches with AC 3 Tier ones as the former is incurring losses especially in Rajdhanis and Durontos and instructions regarding this decision are already issued directing the concerned officials to allow manufacture of more such coaches.
The decision will be as of now applicable to those trains in which the total number of AC-II passengers is less in numbers and not less 250 coaches across the whole country are going to get replaced.
“We have decided to get more AC-III tier coaches because they generate more revenue for us,” Chairman Railway Board Ashwani Lohani said, without giving any timeframe or deadline for replacement of the coaches.
The replacement if done will create around 14,400 additional berths for AC-III passengers in the 50 Rajdhani trains, officials said.
According to them, the railways was incurring huge losses due to the AC-II while the demand for AC-III was always alive. Hence, they felt that there needs to be a change.
As the AC III coaches prove to be money spinners for the state-owned railways in AC passenger segment due to the fact that they carry almost 85 million passengers per annum when compared to about 55 million in all other AC segments combined together viz, – AC-I, AC II, and AC chair car.
The change comes at a time when the national state-owned rail transporter is considering a change in its flex-fare scheme to avail its services in a more consumer-friendly way.
According to the sources, the board is considering deeply to revise the scheme as per a formula used in the Humsafar trains in which the first 50 percent berths of such trains will be availed at 15 percent higher price than the base price and the slab is to be changed after every 10 percent of the berth sold thereafter.
Apart from that, the government is also considering several options to introduce special discounts under the scheme for non-busy routes.
Currently, the flexi-fare scheme avails the base fares for premium trains with an minimum increase of 10 percent with every 10 percent of berths sold which is subject to a prescribed ceiling limit. But, for 1AC and EC class of travel, there is no change in the existing fare.
As per the scheme, the national transporter had posted a 0.82 percent increase in the total number of passengers during the last financial year and benefited with an additional revenue of about Rs. 8.6 billion.
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