Howrah Rajdhani - At 50, the Handsome King 👑 is still ruling the tracks superbly. - Somanko

* Ticket price is the single most important factor affecting the success of the Mum-Ahm HST project. About 1 lac pax per day is required for HST to break even, which is very difficult for a poor country like India.
* Moreover 95% of Indian train travellers are habitual of travelling at highly subsidised fares, the change in the mentality of an avg Indian to pay high fares for rail travel will take a lot of time.
* HST paxs are subsidised by Govt in most of the advanced countries because HST...
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is environmentally cleanest mode of high speed travel (as compared to aeroplanes). If Indian Govt applies its usual mentality of not giving any kind of subsidy to ac rail travel (5% of total rail travellers) or to tax payers (1-2% of total population), the patronage to HSTs shall be a big issue in India. Leave aside the desired traffic level of over 1lac paxs per day, the Mum-Ahm HST may struggle to get 10000 paxs per day. Because the population currently travelling in non ac rail classes as well as the ones not paying income tax are not expected to use HSTs as their normal mode of travel.