Last weekend, I travelled on the Vande Bharat Express between Mumbai and Pune. The train is truly world class. It was a head turner at all stations where it stopped and passed. In the Executive class – which has two x two seating, the fare was roughly INR 1200 inclusive of snacks for the three hour ride. With successive governments finding it hard to raise passenger fares and make Railways sustainable, the Vande Bharat Express seems to be the right way forward. Introduce a completely new type of service and charge as per market rates while everything else continues as is.
For the speed, efficiency, service, comfort and cleanliness – there has never been a better way to travel between Mumbai and Pune as the Vande Bharat Express. City pairs where there is high volume but are close to each other are aplenty in India. Mumbai – Ahmedabad, Delhi – Lucknow, Bengaluru – Chennai, Delhi – Jaipur are just some of them. Once the railways start prioritising frequency over new routes, there would be multiple options during the day for passengers to take this train and this gets us to the real question – will it impact the short sectors for airlines?
The answer in all probabilities will be an astounding yes, especially at places where the airports are not closer to the city centre and the train takes you to the centre. Yet, there is one issue with railways and that is consistency. IndiGo has built its envious market share on just one thing – consistency and being predictable. With railways, the upkeep and standardisation takes a hit with every passing month. I have seen that myself with the vistadome coaches. Will Vande Bharat go down the same route or the railways will manage to maintain this as a premier train?
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