Evaluation of the Impact of the Flexi Fare on passenger traffic and revenue of the Indian railways
Click here to read paper in pdf Abstract:- In 2014-15, Indian railways (IR) passenger business incurred a loss of about INR 33,000 crores as a result of its social service orientation. [1] The total revenue generated by passenger business was around INR 49,000 crores. Hence, the above loss amounted to around 67% of its passenger revenues. This meant that for every 1 Rupee earned in its passenger business, IR ended up expending Rupees 1.67. As a part of exercise to arrest the loss, the Ministry of Railways introduced a flexi-fare system for certain categories of trains. Under this system, the base fare for Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi trains will increase by 10% with every 10% of berths sold, subject to a ceiling of up to 1.5 times the base fare. While this could also be a way for Railways to improve its revenue, it has raised concerns about train fares becoming more expensive. This paper aimed to study it's impact on the Indian Railway's ...