Puri: Odisha’s first Vande Bharat Express, inaugurated Thursday, promises to boost religious and beach tourism to the state and further its relations with neighbour West Bengal, sources in the railways told ThePrint.
The train comes ahead of the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra, which draws millions of devotees to Odisha’s Puri every year. This year, the festival will be celebrated in June.
The Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat Express, India’s 17th semi high-speed train in the Vande Bharat series, was virtually flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The PM also announced several railway projects worth over Rs 8,000 crore in the state, including the redevelopment of Puri and Cuttack railway stations.
The Puri-Howrah route has so far had only two daily passenger trains, the Puri-Howrah Shatabadi Express and the Puri-Howrah Super Fast Express. Four other trains starting from Puri pass through Howrah daily and two others weekly.
Travelling on the new Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat train Thursday, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told ThePrint that the Puri-Kolkata route was important as both cities are economic centres.
“Puri is one of the most important cultural, religious and tourist sites of India. It has amazingly good beaches and is known for its tourist potential. It is also home to the famous Jagannath temple that attracts lakhs of people from Kolkata and beyond,” he said.
The train, regular services for which are scheduled to start Saturday, is also expected to help promote tourism to Odisha’s Konark temple, Chandrabhaga beach and draw visitors to not just Puri, but also Cuttack and Balasore. The train will pass through Khordha, Cuttack, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Balasore districts in Odisha and Paschim and Purba Medinipur districts of West Bengal.
According to reports, Odisha receives around 14 per cent of its tourists from West Bengal and there have been attempts earlier as well to boost tourism and enhance movement between the two states, with Odisha starting road trip circuits to Kolkata in 2021.
“Modern people need modern facilities. While other trains took about eight hours to cover this nearly 500 km route, Vande Bharat will take just about 6 hours and 30 minutes. People come to Puri from everywhere in the world, so this would create a good image of Puri,” K.K. Tripathi, captain of the new Vande Bharat Express, told ThePrint. He has earlier driven the Shatabdi Express connecting Puri to Howrah.
How’s this Vande Bharat different
According to Devi Prasad Sahu, senior section engineer, East Coast Railway, some minor changes have been made to the Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat train, as compared to previous ones in the series, for better service.
“Acceleration here is better, and smooth… there are parking brakes and electro dynamic air braking which ensures that movement is jerk-free, and many such features,” Sahu told ThePrint.
According to information shared by Indian Railways, this Vande Bharat has faster acceleration, it can pick up speed up to 160 km per hour in 129 seconds, as compared to the 146 second that other Vande Bharats take for this.
It also has the “facility for passengers to talk to guards and drivers, emergency talk back units, touch-free sliding doors, emergency lighting in each coach, and better heat ventilation and air conditioning control”.
Railway officials told ThePrint that train also offered better passenger amenities — such 360 degree seat rotation, as compared to the earlier 180 degrees, making seating more comfortable.
The train has a seating capacity of 1,128 people and the daily crew will comprise 10-12 people.
H.K. Mitra, the train’s head TT (travel ticket examiner), said ticket is priced at Rs 1,245 for the economy class and Rs 2,400 for executive class. The average cost of a ticket in a non-Vande Bharat train on the same route ranges between Rs 295 and Rs 2,165, ThePrint found out.
The train would start 6.10am from Howrah and reach Puri by 12.35 pm. It would then start for Howrah from Puri at 1.50 pm and arrive by 8.30pm daily.
Challenges ahead?
There have been conversations around how the Puri station didn’t have the infrastructure necessary for the upkeep of such a train, making its redevelopment critical. Some of the railway officials that ThePrint spoke to also called the new train a “Kolkata-based” one as its maintenance and upkeep will be supervised by the Howrah station.
Responding to these concerns, Vaishnaw said, “Maintenance depots are being created all over India and there is nothing like a base…the only important thing is that a train is running on a particular route.”
Shivaji Sultare, director of press and information, Railway Board, also dismissed any link between Vande Bharat and redevelopment of Cuttack railway station.
As to whether there were challenges in operating the train, he said there was a lot of traffic on the route and the only difficulty was to run a passenger train in a short span of time.
“Geographically, there are no challenges. It’s a coastal area and prone to cyclones, but the route is a safe one,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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