Kerala Tips

Recently in a tragic event, a ticketless passenger died when he jumped out of the mumbai train to escape from ticket examiners. As usual, media is portraying ticket examiners (TTE) as satans. In this post, I will look at the railway problems from both sides.

First of all, the main problem is that there isn’t enough trains between major cities. If you are travelling from Trivandrum to Ernakulam, best mode of travel is by train. But all the regular trains (malabar express, parasuram etc) are always overcrowded. Also there aren’t many of these trains. So many season ticket holders end up travelling in long distance trains. They will have to travel in general compartments and the rush in it is unbearable.

Many of the season ticket holders get into reservation compartments. Some of these compartments are vacant till Trichur or Palakkad, but to travel in them you need to take another ticket. In many cases when TTE comes and asks for extra charge, people are reluctant to pay. When a “squad” comes for inspection, they deal strictly with those who are without a ticket or with an invalid ticket.

Now the picture from the other side. If you are travelling to mumbai on a reservation compartment, the season ticket holders/ticketless travellers are a real pain in the a**. The reason is simple, some of these fellows are sitting there to steal your bags! When you go to the toilet and come back you discover that your bags are gone! The overcrowding and harassment is too much for long distance travellers.

Another problem in many of the stations are the long queues at the ticket counters. If there 5 counters, only 3 will be working! So when a guy reaches the station at the last minute he either will have to skip the train or travel ticketless!

Here are some things that can improve the situation,

1. Introduce more trains between cities (Trivandrum-Shornur, Trivandrum-Ernakulam etc.)

2. Prevent any kind of ticketless or season ticket travel in reserved compartments. If someone wants to travel in vacant reserved compartments, he has to take another ticket.

3. Introduce more ticket counters at the stations. Railways can easily incorporate automatic ticket vending machines for common routes (Trivandrum-Ernakulam for example).

And all this suffering when railways makes a profit of Rs.20,000 crores per year!

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