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Holiday specials

Holiday specials

The Railways have introduced holiday specials to meet the extra rush during Onam season. But most of the trains have poor patronage with respect to advance booking.

This is because the Railways failed to announce the schedule sufficiently earlier. Had it been planned and declared 60 days earlier, the travelling public could have utilised it in a better way.

Another lacuna is that there are no specials on rush days on some routes.

It should be inferred that these specials are run according to the operational feasibility of Railways than to the need of the travellers, if one is to go through the schedules and observe the pattern of days and routes of services.

Except on the Thiruvananthapuram-Chennai route, the services dwindle with respect to dates making it most inconvenient to the commuters.

B.M. Joseph,

Kozhikode.

No trains on important days

Even though the Southern Railway is running overnight holiday specials from and across Kerala (between Trivandrum/Mangalore/Chennai/Egmore) to meet the extra rush during Onam, it is disheartening to note that there are no specials on important days.

That is, when the holidays are from September 14 to September 18, the service between Thiruvananthapuram and Mangalore commences on September 14 and ends on September 17, whereas, the service commences on September 13 and ends on September18 on other routes.

On intermediate days, when the waitlist for reserved passengers are less, these services would run under utilised; whereas on September 14 and September 18 when the waitlist touches a record of 350 and above there is no additional service on September 14 from Thiruvananthapuram to Mangalore and on September 18 no such service from both ends.

September 18 Sunday is crucial in addition to being weekend, since all the people would return after the holidays.

It should be inferred that these specials are run to the operating conveniences of the railway.

The authorities concerned should look into the matter and initiate steps to ease commuters difficulty.

S. Nagarajan,

Perumalkoil

(Camp at Kozhikode).

Readers may send their letters to the postal address: The Hindu, First Floor, Shaaz Building, Near Sarada Hospital, Kannur Road, Kozhikode- 673006. or e-mail: letters.kozhikode@thehindu.co.in.

Kozhikode.

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