The railway ministry is likely to reduce the fare prices of the air-conditioned (AC) local trains and introduce more amenities soon in order to increase the ridership on both Central and Western Railway lines.
Apart from this, the apex body of all zonal railways, Railway Board, is studying the measures to ‘popularise’ the AC locals and also planning to take steps for the restructuring of their routes.
Earlier, the railway ministry has plans to convert all local train services to AC local trains in the future.
According to reports, the fare structure of the suburban AC local trains will be based on metro fare structure finalised by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) or the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
In addition, the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) had suggested the fare structure of AC local trains on par with metro fares in Mumbai and Delhi.
Few months ago, it was reported that even though the Railway administration has initiated the AC local service for the passengers across Mumbai, very few commuters have responded well to the same due to the high ticket prices.
In view of the situation, the Central and Western Railways had conducted a survey to acquire the information with regards to how the passengers felt about the new AC locals. According to sources, 37,000 passengers have participated in the survey.
In December 2017, the first AC local ran on the Western Railway. After that, the AC locals also ran on Central Railway's CSMT to Kalyan mainline from December 17, 2020, and from January 2021 on Thane to Vashi, Panvel trans harbour route.
However, the local train service on all three routes received very little response from the passengers. Against this backdrop, the Western and Central Railways had decided to conduct a survey from June 2021 to know the views of passengers.
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