Tatkal woes

Invariably, every Saturday mornings and Thursday mornings we find big queue of tired people in Railway Reservation counters, waiting for Tatkal tickets since as early as 3 am in the morning. The counter opens only at 10 am, and it's a rush of all the frustrated ticket-ambitious crowd. Waiting in a mosquito-haunted city railway station for 7+ hours is definitely not the best thing to do in the morning.

Train tickets are a privilege at least here in South India. For weekends you have to book 2 months in advance, on the very first day when the bookings open, to avoid being in the waiting list, which goes to 300+, every time. 

If Indian Railways wanted either to make better profit or to serve people better, why is this continuing for years? Once in a while, maybe for festival seasons, there can be rush- if demands are not properly analysed and measures are not planned accordingly. But here it's happening every week, at least twice, for years. If this problem can't be resolved without improving infrastructure, then it should be addressed so. It's not a huge risk to invest that much on a project which is a guaranteed hit. Then railways can sell tickets as much as people needs.

They can add more compartments to include more people even on the day of travel, by keeping some extra compartments and engines ready at the starting point. If the engine can't pull the entire new length, use an extra engine. Goods trains are pulled by multiple engines, usually. If adding two big engines is not efficient for additional 200 passengers, develop smaller engines and couple one big engine and one small engine to pull the train efficiently. The small engine can possibly be kept idle most of the times other than starting from standstill or a very low speed.

If tickets are available any time, people can book the ticket on a date when they are almost certain to travel, which will reduce cancellations.

The passengers are to be given importance and facilities should be designed and built to address the needs of customers. Who all wants to travel and are ready to pay for it should be given the tickets, without the premium requirement of planning all the travels at least 2 months earlier or standing in queue for 7.5 hours.