कोशी का प्रवेश द्वार — मानसी जं० - Prabhat Sharan

Part of Mr. Ashwani Lohani's interview in The Hindu. Hopefully he will be able to do some magic.. _/\_
Q- When you were in Air India, you rolled out schemes to challenge the market of Indian Railways. Now when you are the Railway Board Chairman, what kind of schemes are you planning to give competition to the aviation market?
Ashwani Lohani - There is no comparison between the aviation and the railway markets. The aviation market is 300,000-350,000 thousand passengers a day whereas the railway market is about 22 million passengers a day....
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So as far as the Railway is concerned, aviation is no competition. But when I was the CMD of Air India, I was looking to tap into a great number of people who travel on premium trains. So this strategy was part of that effort.
Q - So now what strategies would you adopt to woo back passengers to the Railways?
Ashwani Lohani - I am not looking at wooing passengers because the numbers just don’t compare. We are far big compared to the aviation market.
Q - What will be your target market in that sense?
Ashwani Lohani - The advantage of travelling by train is that if you leave in the evening from Delhi, you will reach Mumbai the next morning. But if you take a flight in the evening, you have to pay for the hotel room there and if you leave in the morning, you are so tired that you are not able to do business as usual. So there is a segment in the leisure market which prefers to travel by train. Businessmen would prefer spending the night in a train than taking a hotel room. We want to improve our services so that more people travel by us.
Q - Do you think the flexi-fare system has hurt the Indian Railways, especially the premium trains that it operates?
Ashwani Lohani - We are looking at the system in totality. We will see how it can be improved because we need a flexible or dynamic pricing system, just like airlines. But various parameters have to be in tune with the market. Basically, flexible or dynamic pricing should increase the number of passengers as well as revenue. It has to serve both purposes. So we are looking at it.
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