Effective January 1st, 2020, Indian Railways has decided to hike passenger train fares by upto 4 Paisa per km.
What are the new train fares? And when was the last hike done?
Keep reading to find out more.
New Train Fare: How Much Extra Will You Pay?
In short, there are two categories of price hike: For AC trains and for Express trains.
When it comes to AC Trains, then passengers will now pay 4 paisa per km extra, and for normal non-AC Express trains, the hike is 2 paisa per km.
At the same time, hike of 1 paisa per kms has been announced for ordinary non-AC, non-suburban fares.
This means, that for travelling a 500-km journey via AC train such as Shatabdi Express, you will now pay Rs 20 extra, and in an Express train, you will pay Rs 10 extra; and for a non-AC train (which is not Express), you will pay Rs 5 more.
An example: Delhi-Kolkata Rajdhani Express covers 1447 kms. Now, being an AC train, passengers for this journey will now pay Rs 58 extra, at 4 paisa per km charge.
In case a passenger travels via Express train for the same journey, then as per the new charges, the passenger will pay Rs 28.94 extra. And for non-AC, non-Express train, the new fare will be Rs 14.47 extra.
Here is the official announcement:
Ministry of Railways revises the basic passenger fare as per revised passenger fare table published by Indian Railway Conference Association (IRCA), effective from January 1, 2020. pic.twitter.com/SFlDt0bIv1
— ANI (@ANI) December 31, 2019
Which Trains Will Be Covered Under Price Hike
All AC trains such as Shatabdi, Rajdhani, Duronto and others will be covered under the new price hike, whereas all Express trains (both AC and non-AC) will be covered.
Sub-urban trains, such as MEMU, Local Trains will not be covered under the price hike.
There will be no change in the Reservation Fees and Superfast charge as applicable for tickets.
And, the tickets which are already booked before January 1st, 2020, won’t be applicable for the new price hike.
Then last time such price hike was announced was in 2014-15, when passenger fares were increased by 14.2%, and freight charges were increased by 6.5%.
However, since then, Railways has introduced dynamic charges for premium trains such as Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Tejas Express, Vande Bharat Express and more, which is based on demand and supply.
Railways have justified this new price hike, by stating that this will help them to ‘modernise’ their network.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.