Before bowing to public, political pressure to roll back fare hike, Railways raked in Rs 30 cr in the past few days, as lakhs of commuters bought tickets, passes before expected price rise
Rail fare hike, Central railways, Western railways, fare hike rolled back, Mumbai news, local train commuters, tickets, passes, partial rollback
While the rest of us have been wondering where the monsoons have gone, it’s been raining big bucks for the railways.
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The big ticket 'sale’: The ticketing area at Currey Road station yesterday was almost as tightly packed as a local train coach during rush hours. Pic/Datta Kumbhar
Between June 21, when passengers started lining up for season passes after the astronomical hike in their cost was announced the previous day, and last evening, when most of it was rolled back, the Central and Western railways earned Rs 30 crore through the sale of passes alone. That’s nearly Rs 7.5 crore a day — a figure that will almost certainly go up when the final count from yesterday comes in.
Money spinner: Serpentine queues for passes have been a regular feature at stations across Mumbai since June 21. Pic/Nimesh Dave
The Central Railway has earned Rs 11.60 crore between June 21 and 23, or nearly Rs 4 crore a day, through the sale of season passes.
Compare it to the usual daily average of Rs 85 lakh and you realise how much of a difference the fare hike announcement made.
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As per figures available till last evening, sale of passes — and thus the earnings — were highest on June 23. CR sold more than 1 lakh passes that day, against the usual average of 40,000 — and raked in Rs 7.99 crore. “We expect the number to be higher for June 24 as the queues at all our stations were very long. Those figures aren’t available yet,” said a senior CR official.
WR shines
The Western Railway also raked in the moolah. Senior officials from WR said that on an average, 40,000 season passes are sold a day, leading to earnings of close to Rs 1 crore.
Between June 21 and 4 pm yesterday, however, WR earned Rs 16 crore through selling 2.57 lakh passes — that’s an average of Rs 4 crore and 64,000 passes a day. These figures will also increase after the final numbers for yesterday come in.
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“The demand for season passes, especially the half-yearly and yearly ones, has been tremendous,” said a senior WR official.
He added that the season pass sales were highest on June, when as many as 96,900 were sold.
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