Almost all trains bound to Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru from Visakhapatnam are running to full capacity as the Dasara holidays has come to an end. People who came to their home towns for the holidays are now returning their place of work in other cities and States.
The city railway station has been chock-a-block since Wednesday evening. Passengers were seen jostling with each other to board the trains to grab a seat in the unreserved compartments. Those who could manage to extend their leave have postponed their journey to rejoin duties on Monday.
“All trains are running full. No tickets are available. The situation appears to be even worse by the weekend. We are appealing to the authorities of Waltair Railway Division to at least augment the trains with one or two coaches for the convenience of passengers,” said Dharvik Nandan from Hyderabad who came to his uncles’ house in Vizag for the Dasara festival.
The decision to divert some long-distance trains via Duvvada, ignoring a major junction, is also drawing flak from the passengers. The trains bypassing Visakhapatnam junction are: 02809 Bhubaneswar – Tirupati SF special on Saturday and 02810 Tiruapti – Bhubaneswar SF Special (Sunday). There were 35 vacant berths in the Bhubaneswar – Tirupati SF special as on Thursday evening for the Saturday journey and more than 600 vacant berths for the return train as on Thursday evening.
The vacant berths would have been fully booked, had the train been rerouted via Visakhapatnam junction. The Nanded-Puri-Nanded special train should also be rerouted via Visakhapatnam for full occupancy, said a group of passengers.
Meanwhile, train no. 08543 Visakhapatnam-Bengaluru special, scheduled to run on Sunday, has a huge wait list as on Thursday evening. The WL in Sleeper class was 104, in 3 AC – 49 and 2 AC – 14. The WL in 3 AC is expected to cross 100 by Sunday and the rail users are demanding augmentation of one or two coaches for this train.
Similarly, there is huge demand for berths on trains bound to Chennai, particularly during the weekends. But, the Visakhapatnam-Chennai-Visakhapatnam special train is not available during the weekends. To add to the woes, the return train from Chennai to Visakhapatnam has been converted into a ‘day train’, rue the rail users from Visakhapatnam.
Duvvada Railway Users’ Association secretary K. Eswar has appealed to the railways to reroute the bypassing trains via the Visakhapatnam main station to further revenue earnings. He noted that Visakhapatnam Junction is a Non-Suburban Group-2 (NSG-2) category station with a footfall of around 75,000 passengers a day.
Meanwhile, the Visakhapatnam Region of APSRTC has operated 10 special services from Visakhapatnam to Vijayawada on Wednesday and Thursday. These special services are in addition to the regular services.
