Indian Railways announces new timetable for 500 trains in order to cut travel time; halt time reduced from 1 Nov

In order to reduce the running time of close to 500 trains across zones, the Indian Railways recently announced a new timetable which will be applicable from 1 November. The national transporter plans to cut travel time from anywhere between 15 minutes to three hours, officials said. Introduced under the direction of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, in the new timetable virtually every rail zone has trains which have been speeded up — for example, 65 trains on Northern Railway and 51 express and 36 passenger trains running under the Southern Railway have been speeded up while in East Coast Railway (ECoR) 37 express and 19 local passenger trains will run faster. [caption id=“attachment_4148935” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] According to Zee News, the railways has also reduced the halt time of trains at stations and also announced that trains will not stop at stations where footfall is less. “Trains such as the Bhopal-Jodhpur Express will reach 95 minutes early while the Guwahati-Indore Special will complete its 2,330-km journey 115 minutes early and the 1929-km journey of the Ghazipur-Bandra Terminus Express will be completed 95 minutes earlier,” Zee News reported. “Coupled with track and infrastructure upgrade, automatic signalling and the new Linke-Hofmann-Busch coaches that allow a 130 kilometres per hour top speed, trains are expected to run faster,” the news report added. Twenty-two trains in the North Central Railway has also been speeded up according to the new timetable. The Howrah-New Delhi Duranto (bi-weekly) will be diverted via Jasidih-Patna-Mugalsarai instead of Dhanbad-Gaya-Mugalsarai from February next year. The frequency of two trains to Gorakhpur, home constituency of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has also been increased. The Northern Railway timetable also has three new trains for the sector — Tejas, Humsafar and Antyodaya Express. The Tejas Express, India’s first semi-high speed, full-AC train will run six days a week between New Delhi and Chandigarh, and Lucknow and Anand Vihar. The Humsafar Express, completely three-tier AC sleeper train, will run between Sealdah and Jammu Tawi once a week and tri-weekly between Anand Vihar and Allahabad. The Antyodaya Express, featuring all unreserved or general coaches, will run between Darbhanga and Jalandhar, and Bilaspur and Ferozepur once a week. The railways has also reworked the timings of trains to ensure that passengers get maximum time in the city they are visiting and also able to avoid peak hour traffic at their destinations. Keeping this in mind, in the Northern Railway, while 23 trains have been rescheduled for early departure, the time of 13 trains for departure has been delayed. Similarly, the arrival of 18 trains has been pushed forward, while the arrival time for five trains has been delayed. The timetable with the new features will be published in the railway publication, ‘Trains at a Glance’. With inputs from PTI