RAIL BUDGET'07

He is our celebrity, our camera and media friendly man, and once again he keeps is focus on “getting attention of masses”, boy o boy, this guy loves attention..but he has delivered too, atleast being a rail minister. Let's cut the crap and get to the point.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Reduced passenger fares across the board
• Lower fares and freight rates
• New trains, including high-speed trains, and additional coaches on existing trains.
• Large plan outlays to increase badly-needed capacity.
• Anywhere ticketing through petrol pumps, post office, ATM’s
• Tech-savvy ticket examiners armed with hand-held devices on high-end trains to reduce arbitrariness in filling up vacant berths.
  

RAIL BUDGET'07

He is our celebrity, our camera and media friendly man, and once again he keeps is focus on “getting attention of masses”, boy o boy, this guy loves attention..but he has delivered too, atleast being a rail minister. Let's cut the crap and get to the point

HIGHLIGHTS

• Reduced passenger fares across the board
• Lower fares and freight rates
• New trains, including high-speed trains, and additional coaches on existing trains.
• Large plan outlays to increase badly-needed capacity.
• Anywhere ticketing through petrol pumps, post office, ATM’s
• Tech-savvy ticket examiners armed with hand-held devices on high-end trains to reduce arbitrariness in filling up vacant berths.

The lowering of fares in AC-1 sleeper by 3% in peak periods and by 6% in lean periods, in AC-2 sleeper by 2% and 4%, and the newly-built AC-3 sleeper by 4% and 8% will no doubt help the Railways fight competition from low-cost airlines. However, the slashing of fares by 4% in the newly-designed sleeper class coach, the Re 1 decrease in prices for unreserved travel and a 20% reduction on superfast surcharge levied on second class tickets for superfast trains will add to the Railways’ cross-subsidy bill, which stands at a whopping Rs 4,000 crore as of now.(no, no don’t scared I’m not some economics geek, refer to http://www.etbudget.com and u’ll be one too)

LALU’S COOL FUNDAS

• Anywhere ticketing from local post office, petrol pumps and even ATMs.
• Dispersed dispensing of tickets and lower fees for electronic ticketing to reduce queues at booking counters.
  
• Setting up of passenger reservation system (PRS) facilities at all non-suburban stations under group D and E.
  
• About 6,000 automatic ticket vending machines to be installed in all major cities for unreserved tickets.
• PRS-cum-UTS (unreserved ticketing system) counters to be provided at post offices as well as defence organisations.
• Train enquiry call centres to start operation in the four major railway hubs between June and September this year, providing information on departures, arrivals and seat availability. They will also provide value-added services like SMS, railway ticketing and taxi booking in the near future.

And if our beehari babu has his way then travel from delhi-jaipur, mumbai-ahmedabad in just one hour, if this happens, then surely IR will give low-cost-airline guys a run for their money

The experts are lauding lalu again(may be this time he goes to harvard business school!!), the cut in prices will help in checking inflation, lalu’s cool fundas’ll surely make rail travel pleasurable. But rome was not built in day, similarly yadav can’t mend years of mismanagement in just one budget, he’s trying, but it’ll take lots of such budgets before IR can become competitive on a global scale.