Southern railways plan additional services

Chennai, Nov 6 (UNI) The Southern Railway was planning to run 100 additional passenger services per month on high passenger demand routes, especially south Tamil Nadu.

Long distance specials would be run on Chennai Egmore-Nagercoil Tirunelveli-Chennai Central-Quilon-Bangalore-Ernakulam-Chennai Egmore Tiruchchirappalli-Tuticorin-Coimbatore Tirupati sectors, a railway release here said.

Since demand for travel from Chennai into the deep south namely Tiruchchirappalli, Madurai, Tirunelveli and Nagercoil is the route showing the highest demand, the maximum number of services have been planned in this direction, it said.

Similarly, in response to increased demand in train journeys from Chennai Central and Coimbatore to Bangalore, possibly due to increase in air fares and relocation of Bangalore Airport, the railway has planned additional trains from both these cities to Bangalore.

There has also been consistent demands for a train from Coimbatore to Tirupati which has also been planned. The specific dates for continuationof services will be intimated later, it said.

In addition to these long distance specials, Southern Railway has also planned 372 short distance specials per month. This too has been achieved by extending the lie overs and improving the utilisation of coaches.

These specials were targeted primarily for commuters as well as for people travelling to tourist or pilgrim centres, it said.

The achievement of Southern Railway in maximizing the utilization of its resources in terms of coaches, locomotives, maintenance schedules and line capacity is a clear indication of its commitment towards providing for the additional demand in passenger traffic, the release added.

The railway has seen an unprecedented growth in passenger traffic especially non-suburban inter city travel as it has experienced a 15 per cent growth in number of passengers over last year and is currently carrying close to one million passengers per day.

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