Competing with Future High Speed Railway in India: Pricing Policies and Operations Strategies for Conventional Railway

Abstract

India is currently building its first High Speed Rail (HSR) corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad on the western coast. The alignment of this corridor is parallel to the existing conventional rail lines connecting Mumbai and Ahmedabad via cities like Surat, Vadodara. Due to this, the future HSR is expected to take a significant share of its ridership from the existing conventional rail services. The aim of this study is to model the inter-modal competition between the conventional rail services and the upcoming HSR services in India, deriving the policies for pricing and operations. A combined revealed and stated preference survey was conducted at an intercity train station in Mumbai. The passengers waiting to board trains towards Ahmedabad were questioned about their choice between conventional train and HSR based on travel time, cost and comfort criteria. The collected data was modelled in a binary logistic environment to generate the utility function of both the modes, conventional train and the HSR. The results of this study show the positive effect of sleeping comfort provided in conventional trains on the mode choice. The travel cost elasticity of comfort was found to be -0.731 whereas, the travel time elasticity of sleeping comfort was -1.71 hours. It was found that the modal share of conventional train in its competition with HSR, would increase by around 10% with the provision of sleeping comfort by the conventional rail. Study concludes that the Indian Railways need to emphasize on plying trains with AC sleeper coaches, especially for longer distances, to compete better with the upcoming HSR corridor in India.