You will now pay more for tickets if you are travelling in these trains

According to the new timetable effective from November 01, 2017 - the Indian Railways have increased designated average speed of some trains by 5 km and defined them as superfast.

Representational Image: Photo: Pixabay

A total of 48 mail and express trains have seen hike in their tickets after being defined by Indian Railways as "superfast".

The Indian Railways in the new timetable effective from November 01, 2017 - increased these trains designated average speed by about 5 kilometres per hour from 50 kmph.

List of this superfast trains involves Mumbai-Mathura Express, Pune-Amravati AC Express, Bangalore-Shivmogga Express, Pataliputra-Chandigarh Express, Darbhanga-Jalandhar Express, Rock Fort Chennai-Tiruchirapally Express, Tata-Visakhapatnam Express, Visakhapatnam-Nanded Express, Delhi-Pathankot Express, Kanpur-Udhampur Express, Chhapra-Mathura Express, and Mumbai-Patna Express.

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Interestingly, passengers travelling in any of these train will get no additional amenities - yet will have to pay extra Rs 30 for sleepers, Rs 45 for second and third AC and lastly Rs 75 for first AC class as superfast charges.

From these levies- the Indian Railways is expected to raise up to additional Rs 70 crore, as per reports. It is expected that - they will number of superfast trains will go up to 1,072.

On October 31, a new timetable for somewhat 500 trains across India was introduced under the direction of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal. Running time of popular trains have been reduced between 15 minutes to 2 hours,

However, whether these superfast trains be on time or not - earlier there have been many allegations on the punctuality of Indian trains by the Comptroller and Editor General of India (CAG).
CAG in its July 2017 report highlighted that 890 superfast trains ran late this year in the months of June, July and September alone.

In fact it was noticed that despite passengers paying superfast charges - the trais were not running at their designated speeds. In North Central and South Central Railways, superfast charges (Rs. 11.17 crore) were levied and collected during the period 2013-14 to 2015-16 from the passengers on days, where 21 superfast trains did not attain the average speed of 55 kmph.

Overall punctuality of trains is only about a dismal 73%.

Not only this - the report also highlighted critical stance in hygiene maintained by these train.

The Catering policy 2010 - provided for prioritization for attachment of pantry cars to long distance premium, superfast trains and Mail/Express trains with journey for more than 24 hours.

Audit, however, observed that out of 718 Mail/Express trains with running time more than 24 hours, pantry car was not available in 291 trains.

Even premium trains like Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto expresses run late on a regular basis currently.

For the fiscal year FY18, the government in its Union Budget 2017 announced to spent over Rs 50,000 crore on rail safety out of total outlay of Rs 1.31 lakh crore.

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