Can Travel on EMUs With Reserved Rail Ticket, Reveals RTI

Indian Express: Chennai: Saturday, 03 October 2015.

If you have a reserved ticket on the Pandian Express from Madurai to Chennai Egmore and get down at Tambaram to board a suburban train to Saidapet, you no longer need to buy a suburban train ticket. From July 30 this year, Indian Railways has decided to allow passengers holding reserved Mail/Express tickets to travel in suburban trains with the same ticket.

The only condition is that the destination station on the reserved ticket should be beyond the destination of the suburban journey.

This policy change, quite surprisingly, came to light not via an official press release or circular, but through a reply to an RTI petition filed by a resident of Chromepet in Chennai.

Earlier a number of passengers who followed this procedure were fined by the Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTE), who demanded to see the separate ticket for suburban trains. For example, for a person living in Chromepet, it would be simpler to get down at Tambaram and take a suburban train, rather than going all the way to Egmore and travelling back to Chromepet. Passengers would think that logically, they could be allowed to travel in an EMU train till Chromepet as it was before Egmore, but the earlier railway rules mandated buying a unreserved suburban ticket for the journey.

Many, especially those alighting after overnight journeys, would avoid buying a suburban ticket at the deserted station counters at odd hours and then face a fine. That, however, has now been changed. The RTI reply brings to light how the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of the Railways does not allow reservation up to an intermediate station for a distance less than 501 km.

“There have been many passengers who in the past were not informed of this and have had to face fines. This will bring relief to them,” said, Srinivasan Nambi, a resident of Chennai in an Facebook post.

A railway official said that this would benefit thousands, as many were in the habit of getting down from their passenger trains at Arakkonam and taking a local to Avadi instead of travelling up to Central, similar to the Tambaram-Chromepet-Egmore example.