Operational policies based on fare-box revenue management of the Indian railways

Abstract

Indian railways (IR) is one of the oldest and single largest public transportation organisations in the world. Many of the routes and services are not profitable, but IR, being a state operator is obliged to operate them for political and social obligations. We developed a framework to compute the operational cost per trip of an IR passenger service using actual data. The total operational cost was evaluated against generated revenue, and it was found that break even could not always be attained. The proposed framework mandates significant changes in IR thought process and operational policy decisions, but it is pragmatic, viable and does not compromise customer benefits, we believe. We present the framework; illustrate the same using real data from few premium services and our detailed analysis.