Luxury Train tickets’ price may fall in off-season

In recent months, Indian Railways witnessed a steep decline in passenger traffic as people travelling long distances are opting for airlines while the ones who are going for smaller distances chose roadways. To stop this trend, the Indian Railways is setting up an mechanism to sell tickets for luxury trains like Shatabdi, Rajdhani and Duronto, at a price lower than the base price, so that no berth move unreserved.

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has instructed officials of the traffic department to work on a mechanism to make sure that no berths go empty on these trains and has asked his officials to do a price sensitivity analyses for all the premium passenger trains.

"We can have a mechanism where we reduce the fares before a day or two so that all unreserved seats could be filled. We are yet to figure out the contours of this proposal,” a top railway official told ET.

Railways recently introduced surge pricing where tickets prices increase according to demand but it had a cap, which is 1.5 times of the base fare. Due to increased fares, the difference between the rail tickets and air tickets on certain routes has come down as low as Rs 500.

"It's a possibility. Why only increase the fare. You can decrease it as well when there's no demand. Fixed cost will be incurred on that train anyway even when the berths are going empty,” Prabhu told ET.

The national transporter is apprehensive that it could lose more passengers to airlines in the wake of the regional connectivity scheme of the aviation ministry under which air tickets for an hour-long journey would be sold for Rs 2,500.

"It's a theoretical idea if you increase fares, railways would do better financially. We are already losing passengers. We have to go by the reality and after trying the surge pricing, we have analysed that this market is cost sensitive and we have to remain to our core strength that is being economical,” an official told ET.