Railway Ministry has announced dynamic fare pricing for the Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains on an “experimental basis”.
MERITS:
- It will help in generating more revenue hence helping railways to narrow the deficit. As it was stated that it spends 73 paisa per person and gets only 34 paisa in return.
- The extra revenue earned can be used for improvement of the services like quality of food, security to passengers etc.
- This surge will impact very few people as the number of such trains are less.
- As the freight earnings are declining, the extra money earned through this is much needed
- It’s been 2yrs the rail tariffs is increased. Hence the dynamic pricing can be said as a nice step.
DEMERITS:
- Due to increase in price, railways may lose some of its customers to airlines.
- It will penalize those who buy their tickets late, as only 10 percent of the tickets will be sold in base price.
- Other trains may see heavy rush, clogging and failure
- The revenue to be generated through this seems to be insufficient to bridge the gap in loss
- As it’s an experiment and there is possibility of extension of this dynamic pricing to other long distance trains, in future It can impact relatively poor people.