Railways to operate 80 new trains September 12 onwards

New Delhi: The railway ministry is set to operate additional 80 special trains from September 12 onwards, besides around 230 already in operation, Chairman, Railway Board V K Yadav said on Saturday.
The decision to introduce these trains has been taken basis heavy occupancy on certain routes and reverse migration from smaller towns, Yadav said.

“Soon after introducing the 80 trains, we will see how the occupancy is, depending on which we will introduce clone trains,” Yadav told reporters on Saturday. These clone trains will run ahead of the scheduled trains on a particular route with heavy demand, but the number of stoppages will be less.

“Our efforts are on to see that the number of waitlisted passengers come down,” he said.

Train operations came to a screeching halt in March when India went under a lockdown to combat Covid-19 outbreak.

A gradual resumption of train services has been taking place since June, with 230 trains being operated currently.

Yadav said that of the 230 trains, some with lower occupancy could be discontinued. Overall occupancy in most of these trains has increased from 75% last month to 80-85% at present.

The new trains are in the reverse direction from where migrants went back home, Yadav said. “Wherever we saw this trend they wanted to come back to their work places (we have introduced more trains),” Yadav added.

Denying reports of Japanese companies losing interest in the big-ticket Bullet Train Project, Yadav said that there was a lot of interest in the project from both Indian and Japanese companies. Progress, however, has been slowed because of Covid-19, he said.