‘High Ticket Cancellation Charges, Food Served on Rail Premises Irk Travellers Most

New Delhi: A majority of rail passengers find ticket cancellation charges "very high", while a few only describe food served on trains and stations as "delicious", according to a online survey. 

While excessive Tatkal and ticket cancellation charges top concerns among train travellers across the country, however, for a change, the survey, carried out by LocalCircles, an online platform, has found that many passengers now find that cleanliness in trains and stations has improved.

As usual, food still invites the maximum flak with only a few passengers terming it as "delicious".

According to the survey, which  is periodically carried out to understand what citizens think about the state of Indian Railways, there are some important gaps in the system that need to be plugged for betterment of services for passengers.

A large 80% of  the 55,000 respondents said that ticket cancellation charges had become excessive, while 15% said these were reasonable, and 5% found these to be quite low.

Tatkal reservation category coupled with the Premium Tatkal category has taken the ticket pricing to a new high. Although this category is meant to help people in urgent and emergency situations get tickets, the high prices leave a hole in a passenger’s pockets.

A majority of 74% citizens said tatkal ticket fares had become excessive while only 21% said they found tatkal fares reasonable. 

The issues that troubled commuters the most were late arrivals and departures. Passengers said they had to wait for hours for trains to arrive, especially in the winter months when fog wreaks havoc. 

When asked what their most common experience was with timeliness of trains in the past 12 months, 31% respondents said trains were generally on time, 35% said trains were late by up to one hour, 31% said trains were late by 1-6 hours, and 3% said they were late by over six hours.

Several respondents also said that the timeliness reported by the Railways was not entirely correct and many a times the departure/arrival time reported in the enquiry systems on web/MSM differed from that actual arrival or departure time.

Last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), in a report has said that food provided by IRCTC was not fit to be eaten and was unhygienic. 

After this, IRCTC took various steps to ensure improvement, although not much was achieved. Fresh reports say that the Railways have pledged Rs 250 crore to upgrade t pantry cars in trains and ensure that the food served was more hygienic.

When it came to food served in trains in the past 12 months, only 4% said it was delicious, while 46% said it was edible but not delicious, 31% said it was unhygienic or inedible, while 19% were unsure.

On the safety front, 18% said there had been a significant improvement in Railway safety and security in the past 12 months, while 44% said there had only been a marginal improvement, 30% found no improvement and 8% said the situation had become worse.

Responding on cleanliness in trains and stations, 38% said there had been a significant improvement, 39% said there had been a marginal improvement, 18% said no improvement was seen, while 5% found it to have become worse in the past 12 months. 

Indian Railways has recently undertaken an exercise for overhauling the IRCTC website to make it more user-friendly and has added many new features. Although some people have appreciated the changes, many said the new website was a bit confusing and tough to use, especially for senior citizens.

Even after two months of the new site being operational, thousands of complaints are being received every month about the new IRCTC site. People are reporting struggling with finding their bookings to printing booked tickets and several other issues with the user interface. Some have even demanded reverting back to the old IRCTC site.

Citizens also said that the new IRCTC site lacked provision for onward booking, and if their IRCTC account became inactive due to wrong password, it was very tough to revive their wallet balance.

The other issues identified with the next generation IRCTC site were debit/credit card payment options not working, senior citizens not being prioritised for lower berth and the refunds taking more time than what the site claims.

As per the survey,  33% respondents found the new site better than the old one, while 46% said it was worse, 21% said it was more or less the same as the old website.

The online survey is based on over 55,000 responses  from over 27,000 citizens. Approximately, 39% of the respondents were women while 61% were men. While 48% of the participants were from metro/tier-1 cities, 30% were from tier-2 cities and 22% were from tier-3 cities and rural areas.