Railway Revenue

Indian railway is
dragging its feet from fare increase. No citizen wants a fare increase but
every citizen wants railway to increase its services towards people. The
newspapers details do provide information about the finances of the railways.
It provides the information that railways earn major part of its revenue from
freight charges. The minor part comes from passenger fare and among the
passenger fares the major part comes from low fare seats.
Railway can increase its revenue from other methods also. It
can increase the length of its train by increasing the length of plate forms.
Duranto trains can help in this matter. This type of trains running between two
stations can increase its load. Railways have to increase the length of just
two platforms and increase the length of passenger trains. The double decker
train is also a step in this direction. The railway tickets come cheap but
cannot be bought easily at time of rush; by increasing the passenger capacity
of railway trains the railway can earn revenue and also increase services to
passenger by increasing the availability of train seats. Railways can use the
body of train advertisement purpose also but these are all long term plans.
Increasing train fares are short term measure. It can
quickly help generate revenue and finance necessary expenditure for growth and
providing security in trains. Without arrange for finances railway cannot meet
any of its target be it passenger safety, augmenting capacity or development of
west Bengal or other part of country. If
marginal increase in fares do not meet financial requirement of railways then
fares can be increased in stages along with increase in facilities for passengers
and increase in passenger safety.
Therefore I believe that the railways should drop hesitation
and increase the rail fares. It should not gimmick the airways as lot of
airlines are also incurring losses. Airline model cannot be model for setting
fares for passengers. Air lines do not have facility to add wagons to its
train, railways has it. In time of heavy crowd railways should put more wagons
at work in order to generate more revenue rather than to increase fares as
accordingly.
Railways can be provided with more options to increase
revenues provided they are determined to bring in the change and are open to
suggestions from public. The railway has to invite suggestion from people and
own staff as how more revenue can be generated apart from increasing train
fares. The ideas strike the mind as you work with problem. Lot of people
including staff faces lot of problems while dealing with Indian Railways.
Solving some of these problems can generate revenue also. After all what is business,
a solution for a problem?
A businessman usually generates solutions for a problem. It
may be providing with services or goods. If the railways wants to generate more
revenue it will have to look at its problem and ask the question can this
problem solution leads to more revenue.
If the railways wants to appoint consultant it can do so but
in last ten years how many consultants were appointed and how many problem were
solved? Consultants can solve technical issued but here the issues are
strategic and the leadership has to deal with it. Therefore the leadership
should take decision. Additional value generation will yield additional revenue
which can be used for developing the railways and various parts of country like
West Bengal , Doiwala Railway station etc.