Railways New Year blow: Fare for all classes to be hiked from today

However, there has been no increase in the charges on reservation fee or superfast surcharge.  The hike, which will come into force from Wednesday, will also not be applicable to tickets already booked. The revision will also be applicable to Shatabdi, Rajdhani and Duronto trains. 

The hike comes days after Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav hinted at revision of fares on passengers and tariffs on goods carriage. Unlike the usual format of raising fares by per centage points, this time, the Railways has chosen to hike the fares by distance. While suburban fares remain unchanged, ordinary non-AC, non-suburban fares were increased by 1 paise per km of journey. The Railways also announced a two paise/km hike in fares of mail/express non-AC trains and four paise/km hike in the fares of AC classes. In the Delhi-Kolkata Rajdhani, which covers a distance of 1,447 km, the hike at the rate of 4 paise per km will be around Rs 58. The hike would roughly result in an increase of about Rs 90 per ticket for upper class travel between New Delhi and Chennai ( a distance of more than 2100 km) and half of it in second class and sleeper class.

The last such hike was announced in 2014-2015 when fares of all classes of trains were raised by 14.2 per cent and freight charges by 6.5 per cent. However, since then, the railways introduced the flexi-fare scheme which significantly raised fares on select trains and launched trains like Vande Bharat Express and Tejas Express which have relatively higher fares. Trains with dynamic pricing like Suvidha Express were also introduced. 

The Railways in a statement said the revenue generated by the “marginal” increase in fare will be used for the modernisation of the network. The hike will have no effect on the catering charges, officials said.