Thiruvananthapuram: Railways may have introduced more special trains for Onam this year, but only 16 or so of the 112 trips are scheduled on dates convenient for passengers hoping to reach their destinations before the festival. The remaining trips are scheduled either a week or two in advance, on Onam day, or one or two days later.The 100 special services merely inflate the numbers. There are only one or two trains each on Egmore-Mangaluru, Bengaluru-Ernakulam/Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai-Kollam, Hyderabad-Kollam, Cherlapalli-Kollam and Hubbali-Kollam sectors convenient for travellers.Suresh K, a frequent traveller from Chennai, said that “special trains were needed the most in the Aug 20-25 period to travel to Kerala and from Aug 27 onwards to travel back.“But there are hardly adequate services on these days. Many of the services are to Kollam and not to Thiruvananthapuram. One service from Chennai is routed via Nagercoil when the demand is for travel to cities in Kerala. The Onam specials are operated as weekly service starting a week or two earlier than the festival dates,” said Suresh.The special trains between Mangaluru and Chennai have only six sleeper class coaches and more AC coaches, while most of the people on the route prefer sleeper travel. Similarly, a train to Kollam has only AC III-tier economy coaches.Suresh said that the services were planned without a sense of date or direction.“Onam is a major festival and people travelling to their hometowns do not go there for just two or three days. There is also little point in operating special trains on the day of the festival,” said R Mohana, whose relatives travel from Chennai and Bengaluru for the occasion.Some of the trains are yet to be booked but people may opt for them when they run out of options to travel at the last minute. Buses and flights are expensive.Krishna Kumar P of Thrissur Railway Passengers Association said that some of the services may be useful for return travel.“Such a mismatch could be due to constraints related to rake management and the availability of terminals and tracks,” he added.Officials are also under pressure to run specials despite capacity constraints and track congestion.
