Central Railway’s only air conditioned local train is slowly gaining acceptance and patronage from commuters. While the sale of single journey and return journey tickets have been averaging at around 250 single journey tickets per day, CR officials said that they are selling over 1,000 season passes every day since Tuesday.
“The sale of season passes points to a sustained ridership in the coming months and weeks. We aim to improve our sale numbers in the coming weeks,” Shivaji Sutar, Chief Public Relations Officer, CR, said.
Season pass holders account for around 80% of all passengers across the suburban network. Since the start of the service CR officials said they have sold 5,000 season passes for AC service, the highest being on Wednesday, when 1,496 season tickets were sold. On Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, CR sold 1,402, 1,088 and 998 passes.
The service got off to a rocky start on January 31, with a near stampede-like situation at Thane station on the first morning of its commercial operations and many commuters have since criticised the service on social media for running empty. CR runs 16 AC services, eight each in the morning and evening, on the Trans Harbour Line.
CR officials feel that the service will have teething issues for the first month but were confident that commuters would adopt it. “Typically pass holders wait for their current passes to expire before migrating to a new one,” a senior CR official, said. While the Railway Board has allowed first class pass holders to pay the difference to migrate to an AC pass, the rule stipulates that a person needs to pay the difference for the entire duration of the pass regardless of the valid days left on their first class passes. Railway officials said this was the reason why commuters who have only 10 or 15 days left, prefer to wait before buying a new pass. CR officials are also planning to approach corporate houses with offices in Ghansoli, Airoli and Rabale, to encourage the employees to use the AC local.
